


Catfish

by QueenyMidas



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Muggle, Catfish - Freeform, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Gen, Investigations, M/M, MTV Catfish, Multi, travelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-01
Updated: 2017-07-01
Packaged: 2018-01-06 23:31:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 10
Words: 49,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1112811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenyMidas/pseuds/QueenyMidas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After having gone to high school together and parted bitter rivals, Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter find themselves reunited under professional circumstances. They’re hired to host MTV’s hit show ‘Catfish’, a program dedicated to finding out the truth about online romances when one partner is desperate to meet offline and the other has avoided every attempt at real-life interaction. Fake profiles, lies, and surprising love stories run amuck with Draco as the classic skeptic and Harry as the hopeful believer when they travel the country for the show and become invested in their cases and in each other. American muggle AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the perfect, the lovely, Isabel and Kathleen. You guys are the best. After watching countless episodes of Catfish together, we’ve come to the only sane conclusion: Max and Nev are perfect parallels to Draco and Harry in that Nev is the one who comforts catfish victims and Max is the one who curses out the actual catfish. I really recommend readers watch the show but it’s so not necessary for this. I know it sounds silly (people rag on MTV a lot but if you honestly watch the shows with an open mind they’re both entertaining and heartfelt), but please bear with me here.

xxx

   Catfish [kat-fish] Verb: To pretend to be someone you're not online by posting false information, such as someone else's pictures, on social media sites usually with the intention of getting someone to fall in love with you.

xxx

   Harry’s guarded enthusiasm was growing faster than he had expected. He had the contract in front of him, only really heard half of what the job was about, and was more than tempted to sign his name along the dotted line.

   From the second Harry walked into the hotel where their first meeting took place he was sort of blown away. The rooms there were much more than he could afford.

  Still, the job wasn’t his until he signed the release forms, and he was wary of these show-business-type moguls and what they may or may not have had up their sleeves.

   Harry certainly didn’t grow up wanting to be on television, it just sort of happened to him as a kid, getting into some sort of trouble almost all the time. Harry had never looked for the trouble, though.

   When he saw the want-ad for what was described online as an ‘Internet MTV project’, he hadn’t expected it would have much to do with television either. His aunt and uncle were always accusing him of chasing the spotlight.

   If they were in the hotel conference room with Harry they would have accused him of making the leap into reality television because he was obsessed with the attention. Harry thought that to be almost the farthest thing from the truth—who cared who was watching? Harry was in this for the experience—but when did they ever listen to Harry?

   Harry would then argue that the spotlight was often thrust upon him (a prime example was him being one of the few out gay kids in his small town off of New Hope, Pennsylvania, which his aunt and uncle liked to use to accuse him of ‘shoving his alternative lifestyle down everyone’s throats’ simply by existing) but that argument went on for hours and took so many twists and turns that it made Harry’s head spin.

   He tried to focus on the task at hand.

   The lawyers began to drone on to Harry through the pay, health benefits, and working conditions of being an employee of Music Television (even though it no longer played much music).

   “Any injuries sustained while investigating catfish will be paid in full by MTV, should a catfish attack you, we have everything covered and offer our company lawyers to sue for damages…”

   Harry hadn’t even considered that sort of danger. He was messing with people’s personal lives on television—admittedly to share their experience and with the intention of helping them—but it just struck him in that moment that some of them wouldn’t take it so well.

   Harry could handle a little danger, though. This was finally what he wanted. This was different.

   Harry was going to share stories with the world and get answers for people who desperately needed them. It was not only a noble cause in his humble opinion, but an adventure with intrigue at every new twist and turn.

   The only constant would be his co-host, considering every Catfish story was in a different state or even a different time-zone that required constant travel. Harry and his partner would trek across the country helping hopeless romantics meet their online sweethearts, sleeping on airplanes and in hotel rooms until their season was done. It was twelve cases to a season, so that meant twenty-four lives they could change forever thanks to them.

   Hopefully, there would be more than one season of the show as well.

   As the extra camerapeople and producers signed agreement after agreement around the table in the conference room, Harry wished his co-host would hurry the hell up. He’d gathered that his co-host’s plane ride had been a rough one from the whisperings of some interns when he walked in, but that was no excuse to leave Harry high and dry. All of these higher-ups in silk blouses and ties made Harry uneasy.

   The hosts had been instructed to wear street clothes at all times, so Harry and whatever other lucky bloke he was doing this with would be constantly underdressed.

   “He’s here,” piped up the assistant of some suit. “Just got a text.”

  “Good,” Kingsley replied gruffly. Kingsley Shacklebolt was the tall, imposing black man that Harry was going to be taking orders from about the direction of the show for the next few months. Harry actually really liked him.

   Kingsley wasn’t the sort Harry expected to work at a ‘hip’ or ‘young’ network—Harry just then caught him pressing the touch screen with his large, clumsy fingers and having to retype a word—but Kingsley knew his demographic surprisingly well.

   Youth wanted substance, drama, and something worth watching. There were thousands of shows out there; Kingsley had to make his worth watching.

   “Ah, there he is,” Kingsley remarked with a thin smile when the door to the conference room opened. “Sit down, Mr. Malfoy, unless you’d rather not after that flight.”

   Draco groaned. He tried to roll out the stiff kink in his neck on his way to a plush black chair but it was no use. Draco would need a masseuse as soon as possible to work out whatever that bumpy flight had done to him. “Turbulence,” he muttered bitterly before putting on a more professional face. “It’s wonderful to finally get to meet all of you.”

   “Draco Malfoy,” Kingsley nodded, motioning to the chair in which the raven-haired man sat. “Meet your co-host, Harry Potter.”

   Draco looked over in abject terror. Harry, still as short as Draco had remembered him to be, was more than a few inches below his death glare.

   “ _Potter_?”

   “Ah, you two know each other. That makes things much simpler.” Kingsley figured it was one of those ‘all gay people know all other gay people’ situations with Malfoy and Potter, even though he knew nothing about being queer himself. “We need you both refreshed and well-rested tomorrow morning, however, so it would be optimal to sign now and return to your hotel room.”

   Room? Singular _room_? There was no way that was happening. Absolutely no way in hell.

   Kingsley must have read Harry’s mind. “You’ll be sharing a hotel room for the rest of the cases. One double bed each and a mini-fridge, don’t look so worried.”

   That really didn’t help Harry or Draco’s shock or horror. They had some gritty history, and how was Harry to be sure that Draco wouldn’t strangle him in his sleep?

   After having attended high school together, to say they hadn’t parted on the best of terms was a massive understatement.

   Draco had been a part of the Clique To End All Cliques. It was a group of snotty, privileged rich kids that had way more money to spend then they could possibly ever deserve. If Harry’s memory served him correctly, Draco had been in that gang with Pansy Parkinson, Blaise Zabini, Theodore Nott, and… Crabbe? Maybe there was a ‘Goyle’, too.

   Harry, on the other hand, had his two best friends Ron and Hermione. They all still kept in touch—especially Ron and Hermione, they were actually engaged—and had more or less bitterly despised Draco’s group of friends back in school. They’d called the trio everything from hideous to dirt-poor, flipped over their lunches, sent them crude notes in class, and laughed at their expense every chance they got.

   Kingsley cleared his throat.

   “Yes,” Draco answered quickly. “We went to the same high school.” A _nd Potter was a self-righteous twat who kept accusing my family of incest. He was so jealous of me I was surprised his face didn’t turn green_.

   “Then perhaps you can catch up on that later. Right now, we need signatures.”

   Harry didn’t want to do this with _him_.

   Draco seemed to firmly agree with that. He crossed his arms, flashing Harry a distasteful look. Harry and his rag-tag friends hadn’t exactly been passive victims in the situation, they got loads of revenge on Draco’s clique that left him seething.

   “I don’t think you heard me correctly,” Kingsley said, voice rising in volume. “We are starting tomorrow. These people—“ he motioned to the tidy businesspeople around them. “—have children. They have other projects to work on. They don’t care if you hooked up in high school and feel awkward about it. Their time is wasting, my time is wasting, and it’s on you two to sign these papers or walk out the door.”

   Alarmed, Harry corrected a grievous error. “We never hooked up in high school!”

   “I would never,” Draco assured Kingsley, offended that he would even accuse Draco of lowering himself like that.

   “Do you want to work on filming this project, Potter?”

   “Yes, but—“

   “Do you want to work on filming this project, Malfoy?”

   “Of course, but Kingsley—“

   The older man hushed the both of them. He reached over and rested his thick fingers on the paper they had to sign, pushing it over towards them. The conference room was deadly silent; all cellphones temporarily idle to watch how Kingsley would handle his employees.

   It would set the precedence for further insubordination of the talent, and the ‘talent’ in this case being two very cross grown men temporarily stuck in their mutually shitty high school experience.

   “I’m not going to hold your hands here. Whatever tiff you used to have? You can leave it at the door. _Sign_.” Kingsley was there to make money and revolutionize fucking television.

   Still, they hesitated.

   “Alright, Jonathan, call in Fletchley and Bones. These two are wasting our time,” Kingsley waved dismissively.

   The persnickety young Jonathan was already dialing them up.

   Just like that Draco could see the money, the recognition, the untold stories slip right through his fingers. It would be back to the job hunt when Draco hadn’t a clue what he wanted to do with his life, and he’d never get his father off of his back again. “Fine,” Draco snapped. He grabbed the nearest pen and signed away his metaphorical soul.

   Harry was shocked Draco was the first to give in. Were things really so bad back in high school? Had Harry just been clinging to old grudges? If Malfoy was willing to move on after what Harry had done to his shiny green car back in the school parking lot, then maybe Harry was being childish.

   “Fine,” he echoed, taking his own pen and contract in hand.

   “That’s what I thought.” Kingsley was far too pleased with himself for Draco’s taste. He wanted so badly to wipe that grin off of his face. “Now that that’s taken care of…”

   Kingsley seemed to be composing himself for some sort of speech.

   “I’d like to end this meeting on a higher note. We have a huge day tomorrow. We have thousands of emails from young people waiting in an inbox for Draco and Harry.” He motioned to them. “They’re the ones in front of the camera now, they’re the ones investigating, but this is a show about the people who contact us. This is uncharted territory—tracking where millennial and online love leaves everyone and if people can be trusted across the internet—and the hearts of this show are the people who ask for our help.”

   In all honesty, Kingsley could care less if Potter and Malfoy got along. It would provide interesting banter while they searched for the truth, and if worst came to worst Kingsley trusted the editing team to make them look like they enjoyed each other’s company.

   The network wanted the show to wrap up filming as soon as possible so that they could get it into production and work out the nuances of what would hopefully be a hit. There would have to be a formula to each episode: meeting the individual who needed help, researching their online lover, and then arranging a meeting with them. That meeting would be filmed as well, and Kingsley was glad that would be different every time.

   “Keep that in mind for tomorrow,” Kingsley nodded. “You two rest well, the cameras will be in your room by nine.”

   Room. _Singular room_. What had Harry gotten himself into?

   As the suits filed out around him led by Kingsley, Harry hoped to hell he’d made the right decision. He looked to Malfoy to try and read the other man’s face once they were alone in the room.

   Under a couple of layers of shock and disgust there had to be a reasonable human being in there, right?

   “I like the bed furthest from the window. I hate the light waking me up in the morning,” Draco began, cutting Harry off the second he opened his mouth. Oh, that was bad. Draco figured ‘partners’ should at least let each other speak. “Right. You were going to say…?”

   “I thought you hated me,” Harry blurted out. “Back in school. I mean, I sure hated you. But you’re sure you still want to do this?”

   “It doesn’t matter if I’m sure, we’ve already signed up. What happened in school was—“

   “Cruel? Rude of you? Pretty despicable?” Harry offered airily.

   “Are you still hung up on that? Wow, Pansy was right, you really did have a little obsession with me,” Draco teased, falling right back into their old roles.

   “Not even in your dreams, Malfoy.”

   “Oh, you haven’t changed a bit,” Draco snarked.

   “Neither have you,” Harry decided, and they walked to their hotel room in silence.

   That was a complete lie, though. Draco had grown into his bony face in a way that made him look almost like one of those marble statues that he saw back on a vacation to Italy a couple years ago. He dressed casually like Kingsley had told him to, but the plaid shirt and tight pants were much more stylish than Harry’s polo and khakis.

   He’d really have to borrow some clothes if Draco somehow (Harry was doubtful that this was even possible) proved himself to be a decent man, maybe even a favorable coworker.

   Harry was working with _Draco_ , he thought in disbelief as they entered the room in a tense silence.

   Draco claimed the bed furthest from the window just as he had demanded, and Harry didn’t put up much of a fight about it. Both beds had the same blue-striped sheets.

   Harry turned around to the suitcase he brought in earlier. “We have to get along,” he grumbled.

   “ _I’m_ getting along fine,” Draco huffed before doing the unthinkable.

   Right in front of Harry he started to strip, letting his shirt fall to the ground in a mess the hotel maids would have to clean in the morning. Harry’s mouth was as dry as the Sahara. “What—What are you doing?”

   “Going to bed.”

   “For fuck’s sake, Malfoy, are you just going to keep being a flippant asshole until you make me regret this decision?”

   Draco sighed. For a sweet, sweet moment it looked as if Draco was going to give in and agree to attempt a reconnection, but instead he just dropped his jeans to the ground. “I’m going to bed.”

   “Malfoy! I’m still going to be here when you wake up!” Harry reminded him. The whole thing may have felt like a terrible, terrible fever dream, but they both knew it was real. “We have to film tomorrow!”

   “Obviously. That’s why I’m getting some rest; I don’t want to look like a zombie on the first day.” The way Draco snarled that out definitely implied Harry was going to look like a zombie, which only fanned the flames of his anger.

   His dream job was turning into a nightmare. “You show up again after all you did to me in school and you just...? You just go to bed?” he demanded. “Malfoy, I don’t think you’re fully grasping what’s going on here. You. Me. Hotel room. _Months_. Working together and trying to help people.”

   Draco had had quite enough of Potter’s ramblings and quite enough of being awake altogether. “Look,” he snapped. “I had a rough flight over here. I’m going to sleep, so are you, and we’re going to get along in the morning. I don’t have some grand scheme to antagonize you.”

   Harry shook his head. “Nope. You can’t go to bed.”

   “Why not?” Draco groaned. Harry was like the ghost of his past come to haunt him. Draco was one hell of a jerk back in school, and seeing Harry again—hearing him talk about how Draco had treated him—only added to Draco’s pile of self-loathing for who he used to be.

   “Apologize.”

   “What?”

   “Apologize, Malfoy.”

   “For what?” Draco demanded.

   “Oh, I don’t know,” Harry mused, kicking off his shoes. “Should I retell all of the jokes you made about my parents? Or would it be better if I slipped a note in your locker with a picture of you in a dress on it? Wait, wait, I know! I’ll refresh your memory with one of _the fucking buttons you made about my friends and I_.”

   Shit. The ‘Potter Stinks’ buttons were a strange phase in Draco’s life. His auntie Bella had bought him a button-maker and he had gone way, way overboard. He’d gotten so many kids at school to wear them.

   “Okay,” Draco said slowly, sitting up on the bed. While Harry may have felt weaker without clothes covering his skinny body, Draco seemed even more empowered in his boxers. “That was kind of a dark time for me.”

   “Ever wonder how it was for me?” Harry laughed. “No, of course not, I don’t know why I even asked that.”

   Another groan left Draco’s lips. “Fine,” he sighed, the second time he’d been coerced into something inadvisable that day.

   Harry cocked an eyebrow.

   “Fine, I’m sorry that I was an asshole. I’m going to bed now.” Draco tunneled under the sheets, wrapping himself and stuffing a pillow over his head just in case Potter decided to speak any more ridiculous words or request childish apologies.

   Oddly enough, Harry didn’t. He picked a corner that Draco didn’t have in his line of vision to change into pajamas, content with what he’d gotten out of the other man.

   Both of their night stand lights were still on when Harry hopped into his bed. He was never sure what the proper etiquette was for sharing a room with an old arch-enemy. “Malfoy, I’m going to turn these off.” _There_ , Harry thought. _I used to be able to hold my own against Malfoy all the time. Worrying about him being here is just going to make me crazy. All I have to do is put up with him._

   “Draco,” Draco corrected and turned his lamp off.

   “Hm?”

   “For the show,” Draco clarified. “It’d be confusing to the audience if we used last names.”

   “Right. The audience.”

   Kingsley was right about one thing: they had a huge day tomorrow. Whether it was the massive salary, the adventure, or the fact that Draco thankfully didn’t snore in his sleep that night, Harry figured he may as well look forward to it.


	2. Ruth and Chris

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for Mallika, who lets me bitch to her on New Year’s Eve and beg for advice. For her, I have a little surprise in this fic. Happy new year to everyone, too! May 2014 bring you lots of gay magic and queer representation in every form.

**Chapter 2: Ruth and Chris**

   “Rolling,” Draco warned Harry. The crew had given Draco a small handheld camera to use in order to give the show a more personal feel, giving the illusion that he and Harry were the only ones in the room.

   They weren’t actually the only ones in the room since there had to be wide shots of Draco and Harry talking to one another in their hotel-room chairs, but still. The camerawoman who was taking these zoomed-out shots stayed completely silent while she worked.

   The opening and closing credits would be a compilation of shots from the actual investigations so that was all there was to shoot.

   Kingsley wanted plenty of shots of the actual online messages between the lovers, shots of Harry and Draco on the road, and a voiceover of Harry explaining what the show was all about.

   “Hey,” Harry started. “I’m Harry Potter.”

   ‘More casual’, Kingsley mouthed from behind the camerawoman.

   “I’m Harry,” Harry tired again, giving the camera a nervous little wave. Kingsley liked it; it made him vulnerable enough to be relatable. “Based on the documentary ‘Catfish’, the term catfishing means to lure someone in by pretending to be someone you’re not online. A few months ago we asked all of you to send in your bizarre internet love stories that seem too good to be true, since you’ve never met the person. This show follows your leads with me, my partner Draco, and a crew from MTV to help people meet your online loves for the first time.”

   The next part Harry had to read off of a cue card. He kept his tone as casual as he could, hoping not to sound like some news broadcaster. “Is the person they’ve fallen for telling the truth, or hiding behind lies?” Harry maintained his conversational tone. “Will they find love or heartache? No matter what happens, we’re here to solve the mystery. Catfish the documentary was one story, Catfish the TV show is yours.”

   Kingsley nodded and the camerawoman stopped filming. “Perfect.” Harry glowed. “Now we’re going to do that three more times.” Harry wilted.

   Still, he repeated the introduction until Kingsley was satisfied with the number of copies. Harry couldn’t wait until he got to the part where he wouldn’t have to read rehearsed lines.

   “Wasn’t so bad, was it?” Kingsley asked, not really wanting an answer. “Remember to narrate as we go along, avoid cursing, and most importantly, pretend the cameras aren’t here.”

   Harry nodded, waiting for the camerawoman to adjust her shot.

   “You can start,” she told them, one eye deep in the camera lens.

   Well. Acting like they got along in front of the cameras was going to be a chore after the morning they’d had.

   Draco spent approximately twelve years on his hair in the morning while Harry had been trying to brush his teeth, and approximately another twelve years bitching about the bland continental breakfast the hotel offered them.

   “Draco,” he began as if he hadn’t snapped at Draco for being so stuck-up that morning. _Keep it casual_. “I’m logging into the email account.”

   The point of view switched between the wide shot and the camera in Draco’s hand. When he zoomed up at the subject lines it became clear that all the subject lines were pleas for help.

   ‘Who did I really fall in love with?’ was right above ‘After three years, I need the truth’, and below that was a fairly shocking ‘My fiancée refuses to meet me in person’.

   “We’ve got a lot to pick from,” Harry laughed.

   The next step was to start reading some out loud. Not all of the cases would make it onto the show, but the ones that did had to look like they were organically chosen.

   “Let’s get a wild one to start off,” Draco suggested, trying to appear as amicable as possible when really he wanted to dunk Potter’s head in a toilet like he had in the good old days.

   “How about this one? Subject line just says ‘help’.” Harry snickered and Draco seemed to smile along with him for the cameras. “’Dear MTV, My name is Jacob and I’m currently in training to become a washing machine repairman. I live in my hometown of sunny San Diego, California, but I’ve got one big problem. The girl I’m in love with is all the way up in North Dakota.’ I didn’t know people even lived in North Dakota.”

   “They don’t,” Draco confirmed. “It’s just a rumor that human life can exist in such a barren wasteland.”

   Okay, Harry had to admit that was sort of funny. He got why Draco was hired when he looked up for a second to see a smile on Kingsley’s face. He wanted hosts with personality, and if Harry had to say one kind thing about Draco, it was that he had a load of personality.

   “Next one?”

   “This one is from…” Harry waited for the screen to load after clicking on the message with the subject line ‘Perfect guy for me’. “’Dear MTV, The love of my life refuses to meet me in person, even though we live in the same city.’”

   Draco made a face. “The same city and they won’t meet? I call Catfish right now.”

   “They could be real,” Harry offered. “Not everyone has the money for transportation, even if it is just an hour away.”

   “For the ‘love of their life’?” Draco asked with a thick tone of disbelief. “Please. If he really loved her, he would make time.”

   “Not everyone has time to spare from, you know, working or surviving.”

   Draco rolled his eyes. “He clearly has time to screw around all day and text this girl, and he certainly pays his internet bill.”

   “There are such things as public computers, Draco,” Harry said through gritted teeth. “Just because someone has internet access doesn’t mean it’s impossible for them to be poor.”

   Kingsley cleared his throat and the cameras stopped rolling. “We want bickering, not whatever this is. Keep it casual.”

   “Right.” Harry saw the light that meant they were recording come back on. “Oh, here’s a good one. The subject line is ‘I’m ready to meet my prince charming’.”

   Draco snorted. At least Potter could see the humor in that. “Open it.”

   “’Dear MTV,’” Harry read aloud. “’My name is Ruth, I’m a nursing assistant from Texas, and I’ve been completely swept off of my feet by a guy I met online named Chris. We may live on opposite sides of the country, but for the past two years I’ve been falling more and more in love with him and his sweet personality. He’s not like other guys that I meet.”

   It was a cliché, but Draco acknowledged that it was at least a heartfelt cliché.

   “’I’ve tried to meet him a few times but something always comes up with his modeling work in New York City that prevents him from seeing me. He’s a male runway and photography model, but he hasn’t gotten much work lately.‘”

   “I’m sure,” Draco muttered sarcastically.

   “It gets better. ‘Over the years he’s sent me pictures of himself both from modeling and from his personal life to prove it’s really him instead of video chatting. As much as I love those photos, I need more. Please help me meet Chris, I can’t live without having kissed him for a single second longer.’ Aw, that’s actually sweet.”

    “Open the attached pictures,” Draco request, leaning over Harry’s shoulder with his handheld.

   The first picture was all the two men needed to take interest in the case. A copper-skinned, muscular, beautiful man was standing in front of the New York skyline giving the camera a sultry look. Draco immediately zoomed in on those eyes.

   “If this is actually Chris that would explain his model status. I want to help this woman,” Harry decided immediately. “I want to help her meet her ‘prince charming’.”

   Draco nodded. It seemed like a simple enough case to set the tone for the season, and if it somehow wound up actually being Chris then that would be their first success story. “Did she leave a Skype number?”

   Harry scrolled down. “Yup. Let’s see if she’s at her computer.” Harry pulled up Skype, as glitchy as the program was they had paid for a sponsorship on the show, and entered her number. Harry was logged onto the verified MTV Catfish account so it wouldn’t seem as if some random creep was calling Ruth.

   Camera still focused on the screen, Draco had almost forgotten he was also being filmed in the wide-shot. Every one of his little reactions was put on display; how could he not look at the camera? Draco forced his eyes down to the laptop screen as Harry dialed up this Ruth.

   When she picked up, the screen filled with the face of a smiling blonde woman. “Hi!” she greeted them into her laptop’s microphone. The audio was scratchy, but at least they could tell she was real.

   “Hey, Ruth,” Harry replied. “I’m Harry and this is Draco. We’re from MTV’s show Catfish. You sent us an email about wanting to meet your boyfriend Chris and we just wanted some more information.”

   Ruth could hardly believe it. “Oh, god,” she exclaimed with a bit of a southern twang. “This is so amazing!”

   “How did you meet Chris?” Draco questioned.

   “Well, we both liked the official Katy Perry fan page and we got to talkin’ on one of her posts.” It was incredible to see Ruth talk about Chris. Even though she’d never so much as breathed the same air as his, she twisted her blonde curls around her finger when she talked, totally smitten. “And I replied because he was cute, and it just kept going from there. He’s been with me through so much, he always is there to talk to.”

   “You really do love him,” Harry nodded in admiration. He was always getting worked up over love. “Have you ever talked to him on the phone?”

   “Just once when he left me a voicemail on my birthday,” she admitted.

   “Why not call him again?” Draco asked with subdued suspicion. One instance of a male voice on a phone call didn’t prove anything.

   Ruth with her blonde hair and the pastel pink bedroom behind her, shrugged. “I guess it never occurred to us. We both really like to talk over text.”

   “Well,” Harry turned back to Draco. They exchanged glances—it took them a little while to decipher each other’s facial expressions—and they were moving forward.

   Harry turned back to the laptop to see an expectant Ruth. “Ruth, we’d really like to come down there and meet you so we can get you together with Chris.” She’d fly to New York with them on MTV’s dime.

   Ruth, unsurprisingly, screamed. “Oh my gosh!” she said over and over again. “Oh my gosh, thank you!”

   “Send us an email with your address and we’ll be there,” Draco told her after looking to Kingsley for further instruction. The man was waving his hands wildly behind the camerawoman to try and signal Draco to ask for the address.

   “I will! Thank you so much, I can’t believe I’m going to see my Chris!”

   “See you soon!”

   “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

   Harry ended the Skype call with a smile on his face. “Wow. The first case.”

   “We have another flight ahead of us,” Draco sighed wearily. The last one had really kicked his ass.

   “I’m sure you’ll live.”

xxx

   Kingsley wouldn’t be accompanying them on their travels in order to work on all of his separate projects (The Real World Miami wasn’t going to direct itself), so they bid farewell to him at the airport and walked to Gate 3B as fast as they could. Harry would have accused Draco of trying to walk in front of him as some power-trip thing, but that would have set him off again.

   From that moment on it was Harry and Draco running the show like a kid riding a bike without training wheels, and anything could throw off their balance.

   “Pretzel?” Harry offered begrudgingly when he realized Draco was staring at the soft pretzel he’d gotten from one of the airport shops like a starved lion.

   “Yes,” he replied quickly, tearing off half of the pretzel for himself and scarfing it down.

   “You know, you eat like a complete slob for someone who’s so stuck up,” Harry offered.

   Draco didn’t care, he had his pretzel. “It’s sort of how instead of being up-to-date on trends like gay men are expected to be, you dress like a washed-up father of three.”

   “How is this fatherly?” Harry asked, looking down.

   “You have enough pockets to fit a world of snotty tissues in,” Draco motioned to Harry’s cargo pants with all of the flaps and buttons.

   Harry was about to argue their functionality when a voice crackled over the intercom. “Now boarding first class for flight 394, all first class passengers to gate 3B.”

   “It’s practical,” Harry explained as they lined up, tickets in-hand.

    Draco just rolled his eyes. “When we meet this ‘Chris’ in New York I’ll show you how to dress for your stature.”

   “Screw you,” Harry snapped, getting strange looks from the flight attendants who ushered them down one of those makeshift hallways to the plane. “What makes you the expert on this? And don’t bring up some crap about us being gay. Those stereotypes are ridiculous and you of all people should know that.”

   Harry took his seat in first class next to Draco, who for some reason liked being near the window on airplanes but not in hotel rooms.

   “Do you think I’m trying to attack you or something?” Draco sighed as he settled in, leaning his seat back far enough to trap the woman sitting behind him. “I’m trying to help you.”

   “Could you maybe do it with a little less condescension?”

   That was a fair enough point, but Draco’s default setting was condescending. “Why does it matter how I say it?”

   “It does,” Harry insisted. “It just does, so be nice, for fuck’s sake.”

   The woman stuck behind Draco’s chair leaned forward. “Excuse me, but could you please not use language like that? My five year-old daughter is in the bathroom right now, but if you could be considerate when she comes back, that would be lovely.”

   At the same time that Harry apologized, Draco informed the woman to mind her own damn business.

   “See? You’re a complete dick!” Harry pointed out. “Maybe you’ve got something constructive to say but there’s no way anyone will listen to you when you’re such a dick.”

   “Mommy, what’s a dick?” the little girl who had returned from the bathroom asked, having been escorted back by a shocked-looking flight attendant.

   The mother gave both Harry and Draco the stink eye while Draco mumbled something about how children on airplanes should be quarantined.

   With a sigh, Harry put his headphones in and ignored the girl kicking his chair for the rest of the flight.

xxx

   The network gave them two cars. One for Draco and Harry, and one for the camera crew. The first car was outfitted with dash cameras that recorded the inside of the car to capture any exchanges between the two hosts that they wanted to use in the how or the opening.

   To give the show a more authentic feel, Harry would be driving while Draco filmed with his handheld as well and read off directions.

   “Take a right at the next light. No, not this one! The next one,” Draco ordered.

   Harry let a hiss of air out and put his turn signal on after passing the intersection. “Please tell me we’re close.”

   “We’re close.”

   “Really?” Harry replied with a glimmer of hope in his eyes. The ride hadn’t been as terrible as he thought it would be.

   “No,” Draco admitted. “But apparently I’m too much of a dick when I tell the truth.”

   Harry could have strangled him.

   A half an hour later, Harry and Draco were at the doorstep of Ruth Greenway. She lived in a tiny house off a major road and she had hanging plant pots on each side of her front door. If someone had asked Draco to picture the living space of the sort of young woman who fell in love with ‘models’ online, he wouldn’t have pictured this.

   Though a bit rusty on the hinges, the house was well off.

   “This is it,” Harry said for the camera before hopping out of the car. They’d parked right in the driveway like they lived there or something.

   Close behind was Draco with his camera as Harry knocked on the door.

   The rush of footsteps could be heard within before the door swung open. “Oh my god! Come in, come in,” Ruth greeted them.

   Ruth had bought a new sundress for the occasion and gotten her sister to do her makeup. She was going to be on _television_.

   “Hey, Ruth. I’m Harry and this is Draco,” Harry greeted her. He wasn’t sure if he should shake her hand or what, but she solved that problem by embracing Harry with a hug. “Excited?”

   “So, so excited,” she told them.

   Even Draco got a little hug from Ruth, the MTV crew behind him capturing the moment.

   Ruth motioned to the floral couch in the adjacent living room. “Y’all can sit here.”

   “Good, good,” Harry murmured as they settled down. He took in their quaint surroundings with a faint smile on his face.

   Draco was the first to ask. “What is it about Chris that’s so special?” he asked sincerely.

   “I love him,” Ruth told them as if that explained everything. “And he loves me. He listens, you know? He listens and he actually cares about what I have to say which is so rare for me.”

   The cellphone in her pocket buzzed.

   “Is that him?” Draco asked with a lopsided grin.

   “Nah,” she laughed. “It’s just my boss talking to me about work stuff right now, but we usually do text.”

   “Can we see the texts?”

   Ruth’s neck flushed pink. “Well, sure. Let me find some… Representative ones,” she laughed breathily as she scrolled through her phone.

   “As opposed to the non-representative ones?” Draco asked again in the same playful tone Ruth had used.

   Harry couldn’t take his eyes off of Draco for the life of him. Draco was at the right angle for his eyelashes to be lit up by the sun. A nearby window let in the warm, yellow glow that dappled Draco’s face.

   Not even Ruth’s giggle could unfix Harry’s eyes from Draco.

   “Some texts are personal, that’s all!” she defended. “Very personal, if you catch my drift.”

   Draco laughed in that spot of sunshine. “Quite the modern southern belle, then! Along with your ‘personal’ texts, have you ever sent any intimate photos?”

   “One or two,” Ruth admitted with bright red cheeks. “But that’s hardly important! Here, here are some texts between him and I before went to sleep last night.”

   Draco’s handheld positioning to get the shot blocked Draco’s face and broke the spell on Harry. Realizing he’d been mute this entire time, Harry shook off his daze and jumped back into the conversation.

   “’Sleep tight, bae.’ ‘You too, sweetie.’ ‘Only if I dream of you’ and then a winky face. There’s the three big words, too,” Harry motioned to the screen. “You tell each other you love each other before you go to bed.”

   Ruth nodded. “It’s the truth. I can’t wait until I meet him.”

   Harry looked to Draco with concern. Words were fine enough, but there was still no solid proof that Chris was who he said he was. “Do you ever have doubts that that’s really Chris?” asked Harry quietly.

   “Never. It’s so real. He even put that we’re in a relationship as his Facebook status.”

   That wasn’t much proof, either. Harry hoped Chris was real for her sake.

   “Do you have the paper with all of the contact information and facts you know about him written down?” Draco asked. “I think it’s time that Harry and I investigate further.”

   “Here!” Ruth handed it over with the utmost confidence that every lead and loose end would check out. “Everything Mr. Shacklebolt asked for in his email. Hey, I also have those forms he wanted me to print out and sign about being on TV…”

   “We’ll take them,” a camerawoman from the crew offered.

   Wow, Harry had forgotten they were there between Ruth’s talk of Chris and Draco’s… Well. Harry didn’t quite know what that moment was. Draco was objectively attractive so it was probably just a moment of quiet admiration, or at least that was what he told himself.

   Harry was sure Draco would do something annoying and dick-esque that would make him forget it soon enough anyway.

xxx

   “Grilled cheese on Texas Toast,” the room service attendant dictated, handing the plate to Harry. “And a slice of dark chocolate cake.” That was for Draco, of course. According to him it was the dinner of champions.

   “Delicious,” Draco purred upon receiving his meal. He tipped the attendant well and gave him a wink as he left.

   Harry rolled his eyes the second the door shut but let it go in favor of doing their jobs. “Turn the camera on so we can get started?”

   “If you insist.”

   “I do,” Harry nodded, bringing the laptop to rest on the table in front of them. The room thankfully had two chairs and a table unlike the last one, otherwise they’d have to do their research sitting cross-legged on one of their beds like it was a sleepover.

   Draco hit the record button.

   “So thus far all we have is a name, a cellphone number, and a Facebook account,” Harry listed. “Let’s start by finding out who the phone number is registered to.”

   What had to be the funniest part of this job was that any half-wit with internet access could do it. All Draco and Harry needed to do was put the phone number into any search engine and if the number had a publically registered name or location attached to it, then that name or location could be easily looked up.

   Harry pressed enter on the search engine. “No name registered,” Harry grimaced. “But this does confirm that whoever this is lives in New York. The phone’s registered on Verizon and was activated in New York City.”

   “Doesn’t prove that Chris is Chris,” Draco shrugged.

   “Then let’s look at his Facebook. Hm.”

   “Fifty friends,” Draco read off the screen suspiciously. “Nobody just has fifty friends. They have coworkers, old classmates, friends of friends, family members, and any random person who adds them and there’s no way that for this ‘model’ Chris that could mean fifty friends. He’d need connections to the modeling world if he ever wanted anyone to hire him.”

   “Let’s message some,” Harry offered.

   After typing out a message asking for further information on whoever this Chris was, Harry added the official Catfish email for them to send their responses and his own cellphone number for them to call. There was no way that could backfire, right?

   “While we wait for them to get back to us we should image search his pictures, too,” Draco said from behind his camera. If there were duplicates of those images anywhere in the internet, they would be found with a simple search that Ruth definitely could have done herself.

   Harry dragged the man’s profile picture into Google. In it, Chris was hidden behind sunglasses and drinking some kind of alcohol through a straw. “Nothing on this one.”

   There were only a couple photos, too. All profile pictures. “Try the first one,” Draco told Harry. The first profile picture Chris ever used was of a dark-skinned man wearing a fuzzy vest and an appropriative bamboo hat at some photo shoot for an unnamed brand. _Fashion_.

   The two profile pictures could definitely be of the same person based on height and build, but sunglasses obscured the face of the first. Draco couldn’t even really tell if they were the same person.

   However, the modeling picture got a hit. “Original source is Ford Models,” Harry read aloud, opening up a sleek gallery page of photos.

   “There,” Draco pointed to the corner of the gallery that contained the photography credits. “It says the model’s name is Brian Beckham.”

   “ _Brian_? Who the hell is Brian?” Harry said aloud in his confusion. He copied and pasted the man’s name into Google, itching for answers.

   Draco smirked. He knew he had the right feeling about ‘Chris’ not being who he said he was, and nobody gloated like a Malfoy proved right. “It’s obviously the Catfish. We don’t even know if the person running the profile is a man.”

   A little ‘ding’ came from the tab where Harry still had his Facebook open. “It’s one of his friends,” Harry said, surprised. “’Hello, Harry. I can confirm that Chris is who he says he is because we went to high school together’.” Harry paused. “I think we literally just proved them wrong.”

   “We did,” Draco nodded. “Message them to stop bullshitting us.”

   Harry translated that into a kinder, gentler message and hit send.

   “And now they’re not replying. Go figure,” Draco snarked.

   “They could just be away from their computer.”

   “Or they could also be a fake profile. Maybe everyone on that friends list is fake.”

   Harry didn’t think that was likely. “That’s too much effort just to talk to one person on the internet.”

   “Ruth thinks she loves Chris, maybe whoever is running the Chris profile thinks that they love Ruth. I can’t imagine how they’d delude themselves into that since they’ve been lying to her for so long, but I’ve seen people do stupider things for love,” Draco shrugged. “Is that all we can really research?”

   “Yeah, nothing else comes up when I put search Chris’ name in relation to modeling. The name is definitely made up,” he said, let down by whoever this person was that made him believe Chris was a real possibility.

   There was no telling how Ruth would react.

   “Ruth deserves to know the truth. I’m going to try calling Chris’ number to set up a place in New York City where we can all meet,” Harry told the camera as he dialed the number.

   A tense second passed by. Harry had put speaker phone on so the camera could pick up audio, and the two men in the room heard every ring perfectly.

   The phone rang twice, three times, four times, five times—and voicemail.

   Harry and Draco, having both been holding their breaths, let the air rush out. “Damn,” Draco muttered.

   The voicemail inbox wasn’t even set up, so they got the generic ‘Please leave a message at the tone’ spiel. “It’s not 1980, why the hell doesn’t he have a custom voicemail set up?” Harry grumbled, his sullen face mirroring just how Draco felt about the whole thing.

   “Especially since that’s the phone he uses for ‘business’. Models need to show up when called.”

   Finally, Harry heard the tone. “Hello, Chris,” he tried out. The name felt wrong to say out loud. “This is Harry Potter and I’m from the TV show Catfish. We’ve just met Ruth—a really lovely girl—and she wants to come see you. I know you’ve had things come up in the past that prevented you two from meeting, but she needs to see you as soon as possible. Call me back for details.”

   “Who is this asshole?” Draco asked more as a rhetorical question when Harry hung up. Draco had begun to pace around the hotel room as he thought, not really focusing on where he was going.

   That was when Harry noticed Draco had turned the camera off after the voicemail. This pacing, this fretting and frustration wasn’t for the audience. “Do you actually care what happens to Ruth?” Harry asked in disbelief.

   “I’m not a sociopath.” Draco stopped in his tracks, offended. The whole ‘I’m So Cool Because I’m Unfeeling’ thing got really tired by age eighteen. “Ruth is a perfectly nice girl who wanted romance so badly she made herself believe someone’s lies. It’s sad.”

   The only question that conjured up for Harry was: Why would ‘Chris’ lie? What was this person trying to hide, and how bad was it that they had to change their name and image?

   “You think she knows they’re lies?”

   Draco shrugged. “On some level I think so, but on another level she wants them to be true so badly that it doesn’t even matter.”

   That was sad.

   Still, Harry held out hope. Maybe Chris had some physical deformity or something that he thought Ruth would judge him for at first.

   As the two readied for bed that night with about the same amount of snipping as the last, Harry really hoped that the photo and occupation were the only things that Chris was lying about.

xxx

   Harry was only awake for a few bleary minutes when his phone buzzed on the nightstand.

   He’d planned to wake up slowly, to ease into consciousness without facing the day all at once, but the thought of Hermione or Ron being in crisis and texting him was enough to get him to pick up the phone.

   Luckily, it was just a text message and Harry wouldn’t have to try and form coherent sentences this early after having woken up.

   The text wasn’t from Ron or Hermione, though. It was from a contact Harry had entered into his phone at the last minute the previous evening. Draco and he hadn’t stayed up late enough to hear back from Chris in favor of sleeping.

   One of the few things that Draco and Harry could agree about was that jetting around was exhausting. They were quiet roommates out of respect for one another’s need for sleep. Hours in stagnant tubes being jetted across the sky with someone formed a camaraderie that at least extended to letting one another get basic human functions done without interruption.

   “Chris,” Harry said out loud. “It’s Chris. Get the camera, it’s Chris.”

   Draco groaned from the other side of the room and the rush of fabric must have been him yanking the blankets over his head. “No. Shut up, Harry, I can’t think about Chris this early in the morning. It was bad enough we had to untangle his lies last night.”

   “He wants to meet Ruth, and I quote, ‘because she deserves the truth’,” Harry pointed out. At least this person wasn’t messing with their heads anymore. It was pretty clear from the text that ‘Chris’ knew the sham was over.

   “And why didn’t she deserve the truth _two years ago_?”

   “You can ask Chris that when we get to New York.”

   Draco groaned again. “No,” he protested. “No more planes.”

   “They’re not a joy for me, either,” Harry grumbled.

   “I thought you would be the worst part of this job, but I have truly and sincerely underestimated planes.”

   Harry smiled to himself. Maybe they could be friends united in hatred of transportation. “Finally found something you hate more than me,” he remarked.

   “I don’t hate you,” Draco sighed. He sat up in his bed slumped-over with his hair the perfect picture of a bird’s nest.

   Harry usually tried his best to avert his eyes from a shirtless Draco due to the conflicting emotions the sight gave him, but for that comment, Harry had to turn over in his bed and look to Draco. “You don’t hate me?”

   Draco sighed. He really hadn’t wanted to have this conversation, but there was no escape. Draco couldn’t just flop back down and pretend to sleep, so he had to go forward. “Yeah, is that really so much of a shock? You’re not horrible.”

   “Wow,” Harry laughed. “That’s high praise.”

   “It is,” Draco nodded imperiously as if Harry hadn’t been sarcastic about it. He had an uncanny ability to ignore vocal intonations. “You should be incredibly flattered. Most men like you would give up quite a bit to hear praise from me.”

   “ _Men like me_?”

   “You’re always taking what I say so personally. I meant gay men in general, of which you definitely are,” Draco reminded Harry gently.

   Harry feigned shock. “Wow, I’d almost forgotten. If you hadn’t reminded me I might have accidentally found myself in bed with a woman without realizing I only like cock. You’re a saint; I’m really going to have to thank you for that and for implying that I’m attracted to you.”

   With a smile, Draco hopped out of bed, ready as he’d ever be to face whatever ‘Chris’ had in store for them. “You’re welcome,” he retorted chipperly. In Draco’s mind it was really more of a fact that people were attracted to him, including Potter. It was one of the benefits of growing up spoiled.

   Harry actually found it sort of amusing.

   “Now pretend to be asleep so I can text you. Your phone will ring but you’ll open Chris’ text instead. It’ll be organic and all of that.”

   “Only if you put some pants on,” Harry bargained. “As hot as you think you are—“

   “As hot as _you_ think I am,” Draco corrected.

   “Shut up.”

   “I don’t hear you denying it.”

   “I don’t hear you putting your damn pants on,” replied Harry.

   Considering himself the victor of the conversation—as if conversations even had victors—Draco got right to getting dressed and setting up the camera.

xxx

   Literally incredible.

   Draco had presented every discrepancy in Chris’ story to Ruth candidly. He’d shown her how the photos belonged to another man, how this ‘friend’ of Chris’ wasn’t responding, and even with all that she still wanted to go to New York.

   It was a step in the right direction for the television show for her to meet the liar, but Draco was highly disturbed at her lack of self-respect.

   Draco tried to put himself in Ruth’s shoes, to think about what would make him sink so low as to run after a man who had lied to him repeatedly, but not even that worked. Draco couldn’t see any universe where he was with a known liar and stuck by his man. He also couldn’t see any universe where he dated someone he knew online without meeting them.

   Draco had needs, after all.

   “I believe it’s Chris. I’m going to meet him and he’s probably going to give an explanation for all of this,” Ruth had said when the cast and crew arrived back at her home. “Or at least some of this.”

   Ruth hadn’t said it with much confidence, though. Her doubts seeped through the cracks in her armor which had been officially damaged upon finding out that she may have been sending intimate texts to a complete stranger.

   Still, she was doing fairly well. Ruth was confident enough to sleep like a baby on the plane ride to New York behind Draco and Harry’s seats.

   Even with an agreeable fellow passenger, however, Draco and Harry still found ways to get on each other’s nerves.

   Draco—who considered airplane food to be somewhere below garbage—had whined about how Harry’s airline chicken was worse than the food at their high school. It smelled foul enough to make Draco plug his nose, too.

   Harry had eaten worse in college and firmly told Draco to suck it up, which led to another spat.

   By the time they touched down in JFK, Draco and Harry were sick of arguing with one another as much as they were sick of travelling so the conversation came to a gracious halt on both sides.

   The few grumbles they managed to exchange were strictly fact-based.

   “Baggage at Zone 2.”

   “Network car outside.”

   “Hotel on 34th Street.”

   It was pretty much caveman-speak.

   If Ruth was bothered by it, though, she didn’t show it. The second the airplane touched the ground her eyes were as big as saucers. Anyone who looked in them could see the city lights as the sun began to set.

   Draco and Harry were lucky without even knowing it, faking smiles for the cameras when they were caught in shots of Ruth admiring the flashing lights and advertisements. They were escorting a charming, beautiful young lady through the city, and it was her first time seeing it.

   “This is just like the movies,” Ruth whispered, face pressed up against the glass of the network car.

   Her voice felt like another spike being driven into Harry’s aching head. Harry’s gut told him that Ruth would be disappointed no matter what happened the next day. Chris lied to her, and there was no way for sure to say if he would even show up to the meeting Harry had scheduled over text.

   That was another thing. Harry had asked Chris to call him back, but he got a text. Why didn’t Chris want them to hear his voice? It was only more evidence against his existence.

   When they reached their separate hotel suites—Ruth got her own, of course, where she was currently being interviewed by the MTV crew on what it was like to travel so far from home and so close to Chris among other things—Harry had that question and a hundred others buzzing in his head. It felt like thoughts were trying to force their way out, pounding on the inside of his skull and pushing to get out of his ears.

   “Hate planes,” he offered to Draco as enticing conversation when he fell head-first into his own milky-white bed in their suite.

   “Agreed.”

   “Hate Chris.”

   “Agreed.” Draco didn’t have much experience comforting people over failed romances, and he hated that he was definitely going to have to do it the next day.

   Harry sighed. “Maybe it really is Chris and this is all some whacky misunderstanding.”

   “You watch too many romantic comedies.”

   “Let me have my hope,” Harry requested.

   “No.”

   Turning his head to look out the window—since Harry obviously got the bed by the window—he saw what looked like a toy city below the setting sun. Everything was so small, like the people below were really just specs of dust in an old play-set. “At least we have a nice view.”

   “You always have a nice view,” Draco reminded him. “Me.”

   Maybe it was the exhaustion, maybe it was the emotional stress about someone else’s online relationship, maybe it was general unfurling of Harry’s senses, but he laughed without any real malice towards Draco. It was strange, they had been arguing just hours ago and there Harry was, laughing with him.

   Harry’s sense of humor was clearly a traitor to The Cause. The Cause was of course maintaining the childish hatred of all things Draco Malfoy.

   “I can’t sleep,” Harry admitted. “I slept on the plane and now I’m awake while being tired all at once.”

   “Fucking planes.”

   “That’s how they make little planes, yeah.”

   “What?” Draco blurted out after a loud laugh.

   “Plane sex. Plane intercourse,” Harry explained as if it were just a fact of life.

   Draco shook his head against the hotel sheets. “You need to go to sleep. You’re loopy. Well, more loopy than usual.”

   “No.”

   “Sleep.”

   “Fine.”

   Well, that was satisfying. Draco got a grin out of Harry actually listening to him for the first time and from the way Harry’s breathing seemed to have evened out, he really was listening.

   Draco actually bothered to change into his nightwear before falling asleep in the bed next to Harry’s, amused by how Potter had managed to drift off with his shoes on. A quiet part of Draco wanted to take them off for Harry’s comfort, but a louder part did not care in the slightest; definitely not enough to get up and take them off himself.

   The jetlag would wear off after a few hours of rest and they’d both be at each other’s throats over something petty later on, but they couldn’t forget the real reason they were in the Big Apple in the first place.

   Ruth was just across the hall, and there was no telling what was going through her head after the MTV crew left her to herself.

   When Draco and Harry saw her again in the morning, there were a couple of obvious signs she’d been crying. The dark circles under her eyes were covered with makeup, but she couldn’t hide the puffy skin around her eyes.

   In the hallway between their rooms, Harry didn’t hesitate to offer a hug while Ruth didn’t hesitate to take it.

   “I’m worried,” she admitted in Harry’s ear, thankfully loud enough for the cameras surrounding them to capture it. “I’m so glad to be here and I’m so glad that you’re helping me, but, oh… I can never go back after this. Things are never going to be the same no matter what happens.”

   “Hey,” Harry comforted, giving her shoulder a pat. “Would you really want things to stay the same? Would you rather be stuck wondering?”

   Ruth shook her head. “I can’t go on like that, but I’m scared to go on and meet him.”

   “That’s why you’ve got us,” Draco reminded Ruth. He put down his own camera so he could look the woman in the eye. “Even if this doesn’t turn out like you want it to, and it really might not, you need to know that you’re safe. We’ve got your back.”

   “Not just physically,” Harry nodded. “We’re here for you after the meeting, during the meeting… If you want to leave in the middle just let me know.”

   “That’s sweet,” Ruth said quietly.

   “It’s what we’re here for,” Draco joked, voice light enough to chase away the heaviness of the moment.

   Ruth smiled, thank fuck. “Let’s go.”

   The car ride over maintained that level of steely camaraderie. Ruth may have entered the relationship with Chris alone two years ago, but Draco and Harry were there to back her up on that day.

   Instead of driving Ruth blindly into Chris’ turf, Harry had arranged the meeting over text to be at Bryant Park. Families were picnicking and one girl was even celebrating her birthday with her friends in the park, so there were lots of witnesses in case Chris tried something.

   As per the network’s request, a public place would always be best to meet in since their viewership was mostly impressionable high schoolers who also spent lots of time online. There was no telling what kind of grief parents groups would give MTV if they were promoting showing up at the homes of virtual strangers.

   Harry parallel-parked the car, letting the crew in the jeep behind them to take care of their meters. Ruth had gotten to ride shotgun to capture each nervous tick of hers in the dashboard cameras as she drew closer and closer to her fate.

   “I told him we’d be by the book stand,” Harry said for the cameras. For Ruth, he offered an encouraging smile.

   Almost as soon as they hopped out of the car and picked a table to sit at was Ruth unnerved once more.

   She wrung her hands like she had when Draco and Harry first met her. “I hate this waiting. I hate it so much. I wish he would show up right now so I can rip it off like a Band-Aid.”

   Ruth didn’t get her wish. It took another fifteen minutes of fidgeting at the table for a man in the crowd of New Yorkers relaxing in the park to reveal himself.

   The second he started walking towards the table Ruth started shaking her head. “No, no, no. That can’t be him. Turn around, please turn around. Please, let him be going somewhere else but here.”

   Ruth didn’t get that wish, either.

   Approaching them was a slightly overweight man dressed in slacks and a fedora, which was maybe the worst outfit possible in Draco’s opinion. The fedora was tipped down like he was some kind of smooth criminal, and all it did was make Draco resent him more.

   The only way the rest of his appearance could be described was average. He wasn’t a model with dark skin, he was a pale sort of bean-shaped man that looked like he worked an office job.

   “Hello, Ruth,” he greeted the group with the sort of confidence that instead of admiring, Harry sort of hated. “Draco, Harry.” He outstretched his hand to shake.

   Harry took one for the team. “Hello,” he said, shaking the man’s hand. “I’m assuming you’re Chris?”

   “You would assume correctly.”

   Draco couldn’t get over the fedora, he just couldn’t get over it. What person in their right mind led on a pretty girl and met her in a _fedora_? It was a cardinal sin, it was the height of uncleanliness and ungodliness, and Draco wouldn’t let it stand without at least insulting Chris. “Nice hat,” he drawled. Even Draco, in all of his phases and downright bigoted childhood, had never worn a fedora.

   “Thank you,” Chris nodded. It wasn’t like how Draco ignored tone; this guy just didn’t pick up on it at all. “But as I’m sure you know, I have some explaining to do to the lovely lady over here.”

   “You do,” Harry nodded, fueled by Draco’s obvious distaste for the man. They would be united in their hatred of airplanes and in this smart-aleck. His word choice grated on Harry, like the man was trying to seem smarter than he really was.

   Ruth, in between her gay guardian angels, wasn’t as afraid as she thought she would be. “This is you,” she confirmed. “This is you and you’ve been lying to me.”

   “Only about my exterior,” Chris insisted.

   “And your job,” Draco added for him.

   “Yes, that as well, but that was it. Everything I felt for you, every text and message—all of that was genuine.”

   “When you said you were out on modeling jobs, what were you really doing?” she demanded.

   Chris faltered at that, his slimy attempt at a ‘suave gentleman’ faltering with him. “Well, I—I was doing work things. I was busy with things going on in my life. I’m sure if you let me explain you’ll understand, and ideally, I would like to beg for your forgiveness.”

   “I don’t understand,” Ruth decided. “I don’t want an explanation.” Red blush rose in her cheeks, this time out of anger. “You—You led me on! You made me come all the way out here and look like a damn idiot! Is Chris even your real name?”

   “Of course it is!” Chris defended.

   “I—I sent you pictures of myself!” she ranted on, her eyes wide with anger. Ruth looked likely to pounce on him at any moment and rip that tacky fedora to shreds, but Harry remembered how Kingsley had mentioned physical fights were inadvisable.

   Harry gently put a hand on Ruth’s shoulder. “Ruth, we should walk away for a moment, okay? Let’s just cool down somewhere else,” Harry spoke in a voice low enough for only her to hear. Chris was clearly displeased.

   “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe this asshole,” Ruth growled but let herself be led away anyway. “He doesn’t even talk like this online, are you sure it’s the same person?”

   “It’s the person on the other side of the phone number. I’m sorry,” Harry offered, walking with a protective arm around her shoulder until they were out of earshot of Chris.

   That, unfortunately, left Draco alone with the man.

   “I do love her,” Chris insisted to Draco. “I swear I do, you have to believe me.”

   “Actually, I don’t have to do anything,” Draco reminded the man, disgusted by each new mole and blemish he saw on his skin from their increasingly unpleasant time together.

   Chris gave Draco a knowing smile like they were friends or something. “You misunderstand me—“

   “I understand you messed around with this kind girl and you haven’t given a reason why yet.”

   Chris dipped his fedora down in what had to be a display of sadness, which made Draco wanted to strangle him. “I didn’t think she’d accept me,” he admitted.

   “For what?” Draco asked.

   “I know I’m not the kind of man that girls desire. They want douchebags that are jacked and tan, and that’s not me,” Chris explained. “So I created a new profile for myself to see what women would think of me if I looked the part. I know Ruth is incredibly beautiful, that she would never look twice at a man like me—“

   “You’re right!” Ruth shouted, Harry still gingerly trying to inch her away from the scene. “Because you’re insecure! I could care what you look like! You’re a _liar_.”

   Draco nodded sagely in agreement.

   “Well. If that’s the way you feel—“

   Ruth marched right back up to Chris and his fedora. Draco pitied her for how close she got to that damn thing, it probably smelled. “It is the way I feel. I told you things I haven’t told any boyfriend before you. How shallow do you think I am?”

   “I believe—“

   “Do you think I’m so shallow that I would not talk to you because of your appearance?” she clarified.

   It became clear to Chris that there was no way to pussyfoot around answering that. He cleared his throat. “Women like you—“

   Draco and Harry simultaneously winced.

   “Women like me?” Ruth demanded. “What the hell is wrong with women like me?”

   “Beautiful women,” he tried in a last attempt to save himself. “I meant that beautiful women don’t usually go for men like me. I’ve been burned in love before.”

   “You know what—“ she cut herself off. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear any of it. Harry, Draco, I want to leave.”

   Those were the magic words.

   Draco got a final shot of their first Catfish before turning his camera off and walking back to the car with Ruth.

xxx

   Their final interviews were held back at the hotel. Draco and Harry would talk about the case after sending Ruth back home since she finished her interview by then, which wasn’t as melancholy as they had expected.

   They would revisit her case in a few months to check up on how she was doing, and at the time she left New York she seemed to be doing well.

   “I can move on,” she’d told Draco and Harry. “I can move on even if it hurts.”

   “To bigger and better men,” Draco had assured her.

   She’d given them a final thank-you and wave at the check-in line before disappearing behind the security checkpoints.

   “Our first,” Draco reminisced to the camera teasingly. It was just Draco and Harry back in the hotel room, no crew around, and they had been encouraged to say what was on their mind.

   Draco really shouldn’t have been trusted with that sort of power. Harry felt for the people who had to edit this damn show.

   “As much as I wanted it to be true, it wasn’t,” Harry said plainly to the camera.

   “I was right all along,” Draco nodded. “Total fake. And the _fedora_!”

   There was a copious amount of footage from the ride back to the hotel where Draco ranted and raved about that accursed hat. “He seemed like even then he was trying really, really hard to be someone he wasn’t. I kind of feel bad for him.”

   “The _fedora_.”

   “Yes, Draco, he did have a fedora on.”

   “I’m irate,” decided Draco after a moment’s thought. “I hope Ruth knows she’s beyond him. I hope she goes back to Texas and dances on a bar for a handsome cowboy or something.”

   Harry couldn’t help but agree, even though he had run out of words in which to express it. “Yeah.”

   The quiet built up in Draco. He had to fill the room with something, anything. “He looked like the kind of guy who’d jack off to My Little Pony.”

   “Oh my _god_ ,” Harry exclaimed in a near-shriek. “Do not ever, ever put that image in my head again! What is wrong with you? You can’t say that for television!”

   “It’s the truth! We are harbingers of truth, Harry, it’s our job to say things like that!” Draco shouted through laughter, sinking back into his hotel chair. “It’s the truth!”

   “We’re starting the interview over again,” Harry sighed, reaching for the camera stand and pressing the ‘stop’ button.

   Purely to get under Harry’s skin and gross him out some more, Draco made sure to include the My Little Pony comment in every single take.

   Harry really, really wasn’t sure of what he’d gotten himself into.


	3. Kennedy and Brooke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry I haven’t updated in forever, these chapters are a lot longer than I usually write but I don’t want to break them up into tinier installments. Anyway, it’s about time these boys started to warm up to one another, hm? This is for Antonia because we are apparently the only sane lesbians left in New Jersey and more often than not Catfish takes a trip down the lesbian rabbit hole. TW for homophobic slurs.

**Chapter 3: Kennedy and Brooke**

   “One-hundred dollars,” Harry stressed. The shirt in his hand was apparently worth the equivalent of one-hundred McDonald’s dollar menu items, which Harry found hard to believe. That was enough fatty food to feed himself or someone else for at least a month.

   Draco piled another one of the same color on top of it in Harry’s arms. “It’s the fabric you’re paying for. It won’t shrink, it won’t get scratchy, and you have to admit it looks fantastic.”

   He frowned and looked down at the numerous hangers and pairs of pants Draco had picked out for him. As a man true to his word, Draco had taken him shopping in New York after the Chris and Ruth debacle. They’d visited a number of snooty, exclusive boutiques that Harry hadn’t gotten to see much of since Draco had forced him into a dressing room in each one.

   At this point Harry was just buying whatever fit to shut Draco up, but that was giving him more than a few pains in his wallet.

   “This is the last store,” Harry decided. “I’m not going to go broke on cashmere scarves.”

   “You’re going to be on television,” Draco reminded him. “You’re not going to go broke. You’re going to be famous like you’ve always dreamed of and when you take men back to your apartment after filming is done and they ask to get a closer look at what you wore for the show, you will be thanking me.”

   Harry smirked and ignored Draco implying Harry had always wanted to be famous. “I’m not sure I’ll be so concerned with clothes if I bring a man home.”

   That got a wicked laugh out of Draco. “Touché. Still.” He handed Harry another shirt in his size and Harry groaned.

   “That’s it. I’m going to the checkout.”

   “You’re _welcome_.”

   Harry rolled his eyes and got on line to purchase the expensive garments. “Paying for the fabric,” he grumbled, looking over the price tags.

   Apparently there was something sort of magical about that fabric, because the man behind the counter gave Harry a lasting look when he put all of it down to buy it. “Excellent choices,” the clerk purred. He had a croft of black hair and five o’clock shadow, and Harry liked to think that the clothes weren’t the only reason the other man was checking him out.

   “Thanks,” Harry replied. Off to the side, he could see Draco rolling his eyes and decided to ignore it. Draco was the one that was making him buy hot clothes anyway.

   “Did you,” the clerk asked, leaning over to hand Harry the shopping bag. “Find everything you were looking for?”

   “Almost everything.”

   “Hm? Well, my shift is ending in a couple minutes but I could certainly find time to help you out in _whatever_ way you need,” the clerk assured him, voice loaded with double entendre.

   Harry could hardly believe it. Was Draco really right about the clothing thing? He opened his mouth to reply when the blonde himself cut Harry off.

   “Kingsley wants us to pick the next case and get started,” Draco read from his phone screen in strangely sharp tone.

   “Draco,” Harry hissed, giving him a look he hoped was universal for ‘I’m trying to get laid, fuck off’ but either Draco didn’t understand it or he ignored it.

   “We have to go.”

   With a sigh, Harry paid for the clothes and left the opportunity for some anonymous way to take the edge off of the week behind.

   “Oh, quit looking so disappointed,” Draco chided as they made their way back to the hotel. “He had gauge earrings; I helped you dodge a bullet.”

   “I really wasn’t concerned with his ear piercings, Draco.”

   “I was. Someone has to look out for you,” Draco defended. The idea of forcing a hole into your ear and then widening it? That was almost as sick as fedoras to him and indicated that whoever had one Was Not Good Enough for his cohost.

   “Thanks,” drawled Harry with more than a tinge of sarcasm.

   “You’re welcome.”

   They stepped in the elevator up to their room and Harry groaned.

   Spending so much time with Draco had cleared up a few things about Draco’s particular sense of humor and his intention in doing what he did, but the man was still for the greater part an enigma. Draco did things that Harry really could think of no rationale for, like insisting on ordering water at restaurants without the customary lemon and snapping at waiters if they dared to leave it in. Draco always had a look on his face like he was perfectly justified in doing all of them.

   One minute he was trying to get Harry to buy clothes that would attract men, the other minute Draco was putting down any man who so much as checked Harry out.

   Harry thought back to something Draco had said earlier about how when filming ended they could go back home and live normally again. Harry was looking forward to that not only because it meant no more travelling but it meant not having a constant companion wherever he went.

   Sure, Draco was great for conversation and easy on the eyes, but he really was a hamper on Harry’s flirtations. His Grindr mobile app had been getting notifications all day long, but there was no way he could answer them without Draco catching a peek.

   For a moment harry had a sick thought. Maybe—he grinned at the very suggestion of it—he should just flirt with Draco.

   Ha! As if that could ever work.

   Draco slid the keycard into the slot of their hotel room and pushed open the door. “Where’d I put my camera?” he wondered out loud.

   “Nightstand,” Harry motioned before putting the shopping bags down. He’d empty them and fold things later when he made more room in his suitcases, since Harry wanted to donate the old clothes to some charity or other in the city now that Harry had no use for them.

   “Hm,” Draco replied gruffly—it was probably his caveman way of saying ‘thanks’.

   That was another part of Draco that Harry didn’t fully understand.

   Draco prided himself on expensive skin creams, luxurious clothes, and in general being a snob, but he was also kind of a slob. He left clothes scattered everywhere like some maid was going to pick them up and ate like a pig.

   Draco definitely thought of himself as refined, but so many parts of him were far from it. Harry wondered if Draco would ever figure that out himself and drop the snootiness, but that was a long shot.

   In short, Draco was an enigma.

   “Ready to pick the next case?” he asked Harry in a tone that was a sick mix of gleeful and malicious. Draco turned on the camera and pointed it towards Harry’s laptop.

   Harry snorted. “You sound eager for more heartbreak.”

   “I’m eager for _mystery_ , Harry. The heartbreak can be constructive. After all, Ruth seemed to have learned something and she’s on her way to moving on as we speak. We ended her limbo.”

   “I just hope this one ends better and we find someone who is more avoidant than lying,” grumbled Harry. The subject lines were just as pleading as the last time.

   Harry whistled lowly. Their MTV inbox was near full. “Okay, I’m just going to read these rapid-fire. ‘I’m in love with a stranger’, ‘I need to meet this woman’, ‘Homophobia keeping us apart’, ‘Not enough funds to meet’—“

   “The homophobia one.” Draco motioned to it on the screen like a Roman king would motion to a near-dead gladiator he wanted to spare in the coliseum.

   “Alright, here we go… ‘Hello MTV, I really need your help. My name is Kennedy Rogers and I live in Dayton, Ohio with my father. I work as a math tutor part-time, since my full-time job is taking care of my dad. In 2009 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, so the second I graduated from Ohio State University I went back home to assist him.’”

   “Wow.” It was impossible for Draco to imagine that. He loved Lucius Malfoy dearly, but giving up his life to take care of Lucius? That was really something.

   Harry pressed his lips together. “Yeah, she sounds like a really devoted daughter. Okay, here’s the part about her online romance: ‘A year ago I accepted a friend request from a beautiful girl calling herself Brooke who saw my name on a public support group for lesbians who were out who wanted to reach out to those in the closet. While my father is accepting of the way I feel towards women, Brooke’s father is not.’ Oh, that’s the worst.”

   It was true that Harry’s Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon hadn’t been ecstatic about their nephew’s homosexuality, but it was also true that Harry didn’t care, so it all balanced out. Harry couldn’t imagine what it would be like if a parental figure who he did care about rejected him for his sexuality.

   Draco hummed in agreement.

   “’Brooke lives in Mason, Michigan with her father, a paraplegic who needs her assistance like my father needs mine. First we bonded over that, and things only grew from there’,” Harry read. “’I’ve tried to set up meetings with her, but she is too afraid of her father finding out that she’s gay for me to get anywhere near her. Please, please help me meet her, she won’t even let me talk to her on the phone or cam her in case her father overhears’.”

   “Oh, come on,” Draco sighed. He’d really been hoping for an honest one this time around.

   “What? Some people really don’t want their parents to know.”

   “But she could leave the house to take a call,” argued Draco. “And honestly, if this ‘Brooke’ really is looking after her father then he owes her, not the other way around. She’s a committed enough daughter to watch after him, so he should be committed enough to accept her for liking women.”

   Harry agreed with the last bit, but had dated plenty of men who were still in closet. They always seemed so afraid, and Harry knew they had reason to be. “Still. I don’t want to doubt Brooke for being disingenuous about homophobia. It hits too close to home for me to doubt it.”

   “So we’re taking the case,” Draco said quickly.

   “Yeah,” Harry nodded, turning around after browsing some of Brooke’s Facebook pictures to look at Draco and watch the little red light on his camera go out.

   Without saying it but rather making a confused facial expression, Harry tried to ask Draco what was up with the sudden halt in filming.

   “In high school did you ever get shit for being gay?” Draco asked suddenly. “I mean, I did, but nobody really liked me so that may have just been the first characteristic of mine they went for, I just… Did you ever get harassed for it?”

   “Well, yeah.”

   “Shit.”

   “What?” Harry laughed. “They were horrible kids with Republican fathers that brainwashed them when they were growing up, it wasn’t so bad. It could have been much worse.”

   “Fuck, fucking dammit.”

   “Draco…?”

   He huffed and put his camera down on the side of the bed. “I didn’t even think about it,” Draco muttered.

   “Hm? Draco, you said some horrid stuff but you never exactly were guilty of being the pot calling the kettle black—“

   “I know! I know _I_ didn’t make fun of you for being queer, but I made fun of you for other things while _other people_ made fun of you for being queer.”

   Harry was lost. “What are you talking about?”

   “I’m talking about—“ Draco cut himself off. “I’m saying—Agh. I didn’t think about how I wasn’t the only bad thing in your life.”

   “So you’re trying to tell me that you were under the impression that you were the only one allowed to torment me?” Harry sincerely doubted that, but Draco’s bewildered face made him almost believe it.

   The taller man looked like he’d undergone some spiritual revelation. “I didn’t realize.”

   “You’re pretty self-centered, Draco.”

   “You’re pretty annoying, Harry,” he snapped back out of habit.

   “But once again, you’re forgiven.”

   Draco rolled his eyes before returning to sit on his bed.

   Still, he felt he and Harry should have been allies in school! They could have combined their respective snark and influence over separate parts of the student body to try and eradicate homophobia entirely from their little high school.

   Instead, they’d been attacking one another while straight people attacked them separately. Draco felt like he’d betrayed The Homosexual Cause for letting it happen.

   “I was always surprised that your father was okay with it,” Harry admitted to fill the silence that had fallen on the room. “He always seemed so… Unyielding when he came into class to yell at your teachers.”

   “That’s a nice way of putting it,” Draco laughed. “He’s pretty ruthless when it comes to me. But that’s the thing, I guess. My father got that being gay was a part of me, so he went insane with the whole PFLAG thing.”

   Harry couldn’t believe his ears. “I haven’t heard the acronym ‘PFLAG’ in forever. ‘Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays’, right? God, the church down the street from my old aunt and uncle’s house held meetings for PFLAG.”

   “My father ran the meetings.”

   “No fucking way.”

   “Yes fucking way. He’s—I don’t know if you noticed—rather intent on making sure I have the best of the best.”

   “No way,” Harry said again sarcastically. “Never noticed that.”

   “Clean your glasses, then,” Draco smirked.

   “I vividly remember an incident where I put my glasses down in gym class for five minutes and returned to find them broken…”

   “That was Pansy!”

   “Parkinson,” Harry sighed. “I haven’t heard that name in forever, either. Are you two still friends?”

   Draco grinned. “Of course. She’s the sort who never, ever lets you break off a friendship so here I am after all this time. Forever the fag to Pansy’s fag-hag.”

   “That’s a touching story.”

   “I’m a fan of touching stories, if you also hadn’t noticed that,” Draco pointed out.

   “We should probably get back to the case, hm?” Harry got back on track. “Grab the camera and let’s webcam Kennedy.”

   Though it took a bit more coaxing on Harry’s part to get Draco sitting in an upright position, they pushed on with their latest possible Catfish.

xxx

   Leaving the Dayton National Airport had been much easier than getting out of JFK. There was less traffic and less smog, so Draco’s use of the GPS was infinitely better.

   He and Harry wound up at Kennedy’s house earlier than even planned.

   Her driveway was drawn on with sidewalk chalk in flowers and petals that reached upwards towards the garage door, and Harry opened the car door to get a closer look. “Pretty,” he said to himself.

   “Thank you!”

    Harry turned around to see a girl with pigtails and a jean skirt standing at the end of the driveway. She couldn’t have been older than ten, and one day she’d look back on photos of herself in that skirt and cringe.

   “Hey there, sweetheart,” Harry greeted her. From the other side of the car Draco watched reservedly. The girl hadn’t said anything annoying yet, but it was only a matter of time with children.

   “Are you here to see Kennedy?” she asked. Her hands were covered in pink chalk residue. “My name is Mary May Rogers and this is my uncle’s house. Kennedy’s my cousin.”

   Draco made a face. “You shouldn’t talk to strangers, Mary. Or tell them your full name.”

   “Kennedy talked to a stranger on the internet and now she loves her. You know, like the lesbian kind of love,” Mary informed them. “So why can’t I talk to strangers?”

   “We’re men. Men often have worse intentions than lesbians,” Draco told her curtly. “And you really can’t trust anyone but lesbians, so—“

   “Mary!” Kennedy shouted from the door. “Come inside, I’ll drive you back to your house.”

   Even Draco and Harry had to acknowledge that Kennedy was exceptionally beautiful. Even with a man’s name she was the height of femininity.

   A chestnut braid fell like a river down her shoulder; Harry had always admired people who could grow their hair long and still manage to take care of it. He certainly could never do that, and if he said that out loud he was sure Draco would tell him he wasn’t even taking care of it properly at the moment.

   Kennedy paused when she recognized the men that had been on her computer screen just hours ago in her driveway accompanied by a whole SUV of camera-toting men and women. “Oh.”

   “Hey, I’m Harry and this is Draco. We’re here from with the crew for MTV’s Catfish.” Harry jarred her from her momentary star-struck paralysis.

   “Hey! Hi! Hello!” she ejaculated. “Come in! I baked cookies for Mary but you’re more than welcome to share.”

   Mary crossed her arms and made it clear that she didn’t want to share, so Kennedy waved her back inside with an exasperated sigh.

   “Sorry about her,” laughed Kennedy as she brought them into the house. The tile floors looked clean enough to eat off, even to Draco. He was sure to get a shot of them for posterity. “Here, let’s go to the living room—this is my father.”

   Kennedy motioned to the man on the couch. There was no mistaking it, he was definitely her father. They had almost exactly the same nose and both had blue eyes.

   “Hey there.” Mr. Rogers slowly extended his hand to shake with the two men, and the effects of his disease became obvious to Draco. “How are you?”

   Mr. Rogers sucked loudly on a throat lozenge to keep his mouth occupied and his hand maintained a distinct tremor when greeting Harry and Draco. When he put his arm back down to rest at his side, Draco could see the flash of pain from the joint movement.

   “We’re great,” Draco told him. “Thanks for having us in your lovely home.” He was the designated cohost to deal with parents from his genteel upbringing.

   Plus, back in the car he’d read over Kennedy’s email. He discovered that her father’s mobility was affected enough for him to be on disability pay, and had shamefully enough had to actually Google what Parkinson’s Disease was in the first place.

   “Any time,” Mr. Rogers offered. His voice was considerably more free and loose than his body let him be. “I’ve been trying to get Computer Face over here to meet Brooke for ages.”

   “ _Dad_ ,” Kennedy sighed. How many times did she have to tell him ‘Computer Face’ was not a witty nickname?

   “Consider us your enforcers, then. We’re here to get your daughter face-to-face with whoever runs the Brooke profile,” Draco assured him.

   Harry cut in. “With Brooke herself, hopefully.”

   All of that hope would exhaust someone like Draco after their last disappointment, but Harry held it somehow.

   “Where can we set up to ask you some more questions about Brooke?” Harry asked. The crew had gotten plenty of footage of them standing around with her father, and Harry knew if it were him on that couch he wouldn’t appreciate all the cameras in his home.

   “My room would be fine,” Kennedy shrugged. She bent down to kiss her dad on the cheek before leading them down another hallway.

   “So it’s really great that your father is supportive,” Harry mentioned to fill the dead air time as they filed into Kennedy’s room.

   “Yeah, he sort of always knew. I used to make my Barbies date each other even though I had an ample amount of Ken dolls.”

   The piles of teddy bears and butterfly stickers on the wall indicated that she’d lived there as a child. Draco felt horrible for her; he could never sleep in his childhood bed past the age of twenty. Harry wondered if the Barbies were still around.

   Smoothing out her sheets, she offered Harry and Draco a couple of spots at the end of her bed while she sat at the head of it. “Ask away.” The sooner they got all of the song and dance of the television show over the sooner she could see Brooke.

   If it weren’t for that, Kennedy strongly believed she would have never, ever ended up on reality television.

   Draco turned the camera on Harry and the crew on the other side of the room did the same. “So you met online,” Harry started. “But what was different about her? What about talking to her made you want to be in a relationship with her?”

   “She was different,” Kennedy told him. “Not different like quirky, but different like completely unique. We talked about the craziest stuff—stuff I could never talk about with anyone else without them thinking I was totally insane. Our first conversation was about these YouTube videos of adults playing really intense Yu-Gi-Oh card games and screaming when they lost, it was completely hilarious. The humor was just so specific, you know? We’d both seen the show as kids and to watch these grown adults play it like we had then? It was so funny.”

   “So you like her humor,” Harry said with a smile. That was essential to all of his relationships.

   Kennedy nodded. “It’s almost exactly like mine. We’re always sending each other funny videos. Not like ‘cat making weird noises’ funny, but ‘two punk boys getting their lips rings caught while making out’ funny.”

   The love that formed over watching ridiculous videos together was often the strongest.

   “And, of course, I love her,” Kennedy added. It seemed like such an obvious fact that she’d forgotten to say it out loud. “More than anything.”

   “Want to show us some of your online interactions?” Draco wanted to verify this girl was who she said she was before he got his hopes up, but it looked as if it was too late for Harry.

   He was all sunshine and smiles, and while Draco was growing fond of the way Harry’s nose crinkled up when he was excited to bring ‘soulmates’ together, he worried Harry was going to be betrayed again by some dishonest person behind a computer screen.

   Kennedy woke up her laptop and opened to Brooke’s Facebook page. “Here she is,” she showed proudly, the chat log from their conversation the night before still open.

   “What…?” Draco pointed at the square where a profile picture should have been and instead there was what looked like a flying tropical banana tree monster.

   “It’s her favorite Pokémon!” Kennedy replied as if that were obvious. “There was this month that everyone on Facebook changed their profile picture to a Pokémon and that’s Tropius.”

   “What. Why.” Draco phrased it more as a pair of statements than questions.

   Kennedy, who was clearly not connecting the dots as Draco was, looked to the two men inquistively. “What is it?”

   “Well,” Draco broke the news to her gently. “It seems Brooke’s profile doesn’t have any actual pictures of her. Do you see how that could be problematic?”

   “She has a picture of her feet at the edge of her bed somewhere in here…”

   “What about her face?” Harry guided, using the mouse to view all of Brooke’s past profile pictures.

   Just as Draco expected, they were various cartoon characters, drawings, and one was just the poster for the Silence of The Lambs movie replaced with Nicolas Cage’s face. Okay, that one was kind of funny.

   Still! Amongst the many rules Draco both made up and adhered to, not having a single identifying picture of the person one was dating hadn’t even become a rule until that moment because Draco hadn’t thought it possible. “You don’t know what she looks like?”

   “I mean, she’s told me the basics. She’s got blonde hair, blue eyes, she’s a size zero…” Kennedy recounted dreamily.

   With that it seemed Draco and Harry had their work cut out for them.

xxx

   Harry would have been dragging Brooke’s profile pictures into Google image search if they were pictures of actual humans, but alas. The only solid piece of evidence for Brooke’s identity was her phone number.

   “I don’t want to hit enter,” Harry lamented.

   He and Draco were just about to search who the phone was registered to, and Harry was afraid his hopes for Kennedy and Brooke’s romance would be squashed like their last case.

   “Just do it. ‘Brooke’ is lying.” Draco lay on his stomach, camera pointed at the screen. The hotel room they’d been given this time around in Ohio was nice but had considerably less room. No desk, no lounge chairs. The room was bare except for two beds, a dresser, and an old television.

   Draco complained loudly to Kingsley over the phone about it but it as usual with Draco’s bitching fell on deaf ears. Kingsley had said something along the lines of “Life must be so hard for you, Malfoy,” and hung up.

   Harry hit enter on the cellphone number search since the show had to go on, but Harry was unconsciously holding his breath anyway.

   “Dammit.”

   “No name registered to the phone,” Draco read out loud. He turned the camera back on Harry’s disappointed face. “You look like a kicked puppy.”

   “I just want Kennedy to be happy!”

   “So do I, but—“

   “I want her to not only be happy and learn from this experience,” Harry countered before Draco even rehashed his point about even the failed romances being valuable experiences. “But I want her to come out of it in love with a real, genuine girl.”

   “Sap,” Draco accused blamelessly.

   Harry gave him a look. “It happens, you know. People can fall in love online and it can all work out.”

   “I’m not saying it doesn’t happen.”

   “I want it to happen,” Harry clarified. “I want it to happen for all of these people, every single one in that inbox the network set up.”

   That was the very definition of sap, according to Draco. “I never took you to be one of those guys who’s obsessed with love. True Love and all that.”

   “I’m not obsessed! Everyone wants to find someone they can share their life with, it’s not that strange.”

   “I’m not saying it’s strange,” Draco replied calmly. Even Draco with all of his cold ways and sarcastic defense mechanisms longed for someone to curl up next to at night, someone who really understood him. “It’s just… interesting that you think that.”

   Whatever Draco was trying to imply with that sailed right over Harry’s head. “Yeah, yeah. I think there’s someone out there for everyone and that it would be nice if everyone found their respective someone. There’d be less war; everyone would be getting laid.”

   “Harry James Potter, humanitarian extraordinaire,” Draco snorted.

   “I really am,” Harry deadpanned, mimicking how Draco pretended not to pick up on tone. “That’s why I do this job, for the people. Even you, Draco Malfoy, have a soulmate out there. If I could bring you to that poor bastard, I would.”

   Draco couldn’t help but laugh. Harry was such a riot, the way he placed his hand over his heart dramatically when he was pretending to be serious and the way his big, green eyes somehow got bigger behind his glasses. “’Poor bastard’ is a really strange way of saying ‘luckiest man alive’, but I suppose I’ll take your kindness even with your grievous pronunciation errors.”

   “You’re a saint, Draco.”

   Draco figured he must have been getting better at his job, since he hadn’t realized the camera was still on for that entire conversation. A light flush came to his face. “Anyway, Peacekeeper Potter, let’s try something else with that number of ‘Brooke’s.”

   “Try what?” Harry tilted his head to the side and Draco had to force down more color from entering his cheeks. Harry really needed to stop looking so adorably innocent.

   Not the sort of innocent that most people used the word to mean—after all Draco had seen Harry attempting to get in a man’s pants just a day ago—but the sort of innocent that was untainted by sadness. Harry had experienced sorrow and hardship at one point or another, but it hadn’t seemed to have stuck to him.

   Harry had been hurt but he forgave—he even forgave Draco. Harry was a sarcastic little fuck, but never out of pessimism or melancholy.

   By Draco’s definition, Harry was jaded some aspects, probably filthy in bed, but still innocent. Harry still opened himself up to people anyway.

   “Draco?”

   Oh, shit. “Call the number.”

   “I don’t know if you remember how well that went last time—“

   “Just call it,” Draco pushed on. “If this ‘Brooke’ is telling the truth like you want her to be then she needs money to support her father, and she’d use her phone for business. Unidentified numbers calling her in the afternoon? It looks like business, not like her girlfriend checking up on her.”

   “You’re evil,” Harry grinned.

   That was so typically Harry, smiling at the idea of evil and dialing the phone number without hesitation.

   Harry put it on speakerphone and crossed his fingers. “Pick up, pick up…”

   “Don’t mutter to yourself, you’ll sound insane if she does pick up.”

   The phone rang.

   “What if she doesn’t pick up?” Harry asked. “Then what? We’ve got nothing else.”

   “Shh!” Draco hushed him.

   The phone rang again.

   “But we have nothing else!”

   “We have the Facebook profile, calm down. We might hear back from some of her Facebook friends since we sent them questions,” Draco hissed.

   “Oh.” Harry had really let his anxiety get the best of him in the moment.

   “Um… Hello?”

   Harry let out a sigh of relief. It was a woman’s voice on the other end of the phone.

   To the woman on the phone, however, that sounded like the creepy heavy breathing that serial killers used on the phone before announcing they were inside of their victim’s house. “Who is this?” she demanded.

   “Sorry,” Harry said quickly, lifting the smartphone up to speak into its receiver. “This is Harry Potter. Is Brooke speaking?”

   “Yes, what is it?” Brooke’s reply was short, and in the background the whir of some kind of machine could be heard. A laundry machine? A dishwasher?

   “I’m from MTV’s upcoming show, Catfish, but that’s not really important. What is important is that I’ve been talking to a bright young lady named Kennedy, and she would really like to meet with you. I know it hasn’t been possible in the past—“

   “Kennedy sent you to _investigate_ me?” she snapped.

   Draco held the camera steady, smiling at the sight of Harry getting the third degree.

   “Well, no, she really just—“

   “Who even are you? Are you a friend of hers?”

   “Yes,” Harry answered. “We are.”

   “ _We_? Who else is there?”

   Harry looked to Draco for help but the blonde just kept on filming. Harry flipped him and the camera off. “My partner and I, Draco, we bring people together who have online romances—“

   “I don’t care what you and your boyfriend do! Look, I have to go, my father’s physical therapy is almost done and I have to pick him up,” she dismissed them. Draco snorted at the ‘boyfriend’ comment, since that would only happen in Harry’s dreams.

   The call wasn’t a complete failure though, Draco and Harry at least got to see she was serious about having a father who needed help—or she was just one hell of a vigilant liar. “Listen, we’ve been down here talking to Kennedy and she wants to meet you,” Harry cut to the chase. “She loves you, and money isn’t an issue. We can provide for travel.”

   “Meet me? Oh, now she’s really lost it. I—I can’t! I have to go—“

   “Please tell me you’ll think about it. Please, consider how much this relationship means to her and to you. I know you’ve found someone who’s at least a friend in Kennedy, and we just want to make sure you can let that grow into more by meeting.” Harry’s legs felt like they had to run after Brooke, his hands clutching the phone tightly. “And you can text me back if you can’t call. Kennedy wants to see you and after all this time with her, I’d think you’d want to see her too.”

   “I do!” Brooke argued. “Of course I do, I just—my father. It’s all my father. Now’s not a good time because I’m living with him.”

   Draco seriously doubted it was ‘all her father’. Brooke was a grown woman; she wasn’t beholden to her parents anymore. “It’s never going to be a ‘good time’,” Draco finally spoke into the phone. “If you wait for a ‘good time’ then you’ll wait for the rest of your life. Kennedy wants to meet _now_.”

   From Brooke’s end of the line there was silence for a moment. Harry let Draco’s words hang in the air, waiting for her response.

   “I’ll… I’ll think about it.”

   “Please get back to us soon,” Harry pressed on, the spark of hope in the pit of his stomach blazing brighter. “Text me whenever you can.”

   “Fine. I have to go now.”

   The phone clicked off.

   Harry put the phone back on the bed with his shoulders feeling significantly lighter. “There we go.”

   “All we know is her voice, Harry,” Draco reminded him.

   “Shut up and let me enjoy what is definitely going to be my victory.”

   “ _Your_ victory?”

   “Yes, mine,” nodded Harry. “You’re the skeptic and I’m the believer, and this time believing is going to win out.”

xxx

_“You have to chase your heart, baby,”_ Mr. Rogers had said to his little girl (well, she was a grown woman with all kinds of responsibilities and hardships but he still saw her as a little girl sometimes) when he was left with the live-in nurse from the network.

   No matter what was going on in Brooke’s side of the relationship regarding lies or evading meetings, Kennedy’s excuse for not seeing Brooke was a legitimate one. Harry and Draco saw her father’s conditions in person, and had called Kingsley to make sure Mr. Rogers had someone to take care of him while Kennedy was off for a few days in search of answers about who she was currently in a relationship with.

   It was a long-overdue vacation for Kennedy in Draco’s humble opinion, and in a significantly less-humble opinion he held that not knowing the person one was in a relationship with was just sad.

   The world spun on regardless of Draco’s opinion as usual.

   Harry had received the text from Brooke just an hour after their heated phone call that yes, she would meet but no, it would have to be away from her house.

_“We’re going in even more blind than before,”_ Draco had grimaced, handheld focused on the text message. “ _At least with Chris we knew he was lying about something. This time around we have no dirt, no ammunition on what could be a Catfish. I can’t believe Kennedy is doing this without demanding a picture.”_

_“Maybe Kennedy doesn’t care what Brooke looks like,”_ Harry had offered in reply. _“We have Brooke’s voice and a café to meet at, so at least we know this is a real woman in Michigan who we’re speaking to.”_

   That wasn’t enough for Draco.

   All of the memories of arguing with Harry in the hotel room about if someone could truly fall in love without seeing someone’s face and Kennedy hugging her father goodbye swirled around in Draco’s head on the plane ride over.

   Harry had his headphones on and was engrossed in some awful-looking movie with animated owls when Draco got the nerve to challenge just what the hell Kennedy was thinking. She’d requested the window seat, so for politeness’ sake he’d sat in between her and Harry.

   “You love her but you don’t know what she looks like?” Draco finally blurted out.

   Kennedy turned her head from the window like she’d been expecting Draco to ask that. “Yes.”

   That was just insane. “You know the whole ‘blonde hair, blue eyes, size zero’ thing is probably a lie, right?”

  “I believe her,” Kennedy said firmly.

   “Believe her or just want to believe her?”

   “I told her,” Kennedy articulated as if she’d told herself this a thousand times before. “That she could be honest with me and I wouldn’t judge her. I don’t see a reason as to why she would lie about her appearance when I don’t care.”

   “You ‘don’t care’? That’s completely bizarre. What if she has no teeth, or a massive case of acne?” Draco intruded. He couldn’t help himself, the idea of putting physical attraction low on the list of relationship requirements was just too foreign to him.

   “Her looks just aren’t that important to me! What would be important is if she lied.”

   Draco realized he’d have to cushion this poor girl’s fall. Of course Brooke was lying. “If,” he offered. “Totally hypothetically, you find out she was lying about her appearance, what would that mean to you? What would you do?”

   “I don’t think that’s going to happen,” she replied coldly.

   “But if it does?”

   “It won’t.” With that, she rolled onto her side and tried to make the best of the hour-long flight as a nap instead of an interview.

xxx

   Kennedy maintained her determination on the moonlit drive to the hotel, texting Brooke on her way there.

   Once again Harry was smiling that stupid, huge, pretty smile, trying to get a look over her shoulder. _“What are you saying? Is that an ‘I love you’? I can’t wait, I can’t wait for you two to meet,”_ he had narrated to the camera.

   Draco, meanwhile, had grit his teeth and filmed.

   When he woke up the next morning in a cold sweat that haunted him for seemingly no reason, he found that his jaw had actually begun to ache from all of his teeth grinding.

   “Come on!” Harry tossed at Draco from across the room to wake him up. “Today’s the day.”

   _The day that Kennedy figures out she’s been duped, yes_ , Draco thought bitterly to himself and got dressed.

   Consumed with that thought while Harry played the role of Kennedy’s personal cheerleader on the way over to the café Brooke had requested a meeting at, Draco hadn’t even noticed how fast that car ride was.

   “Draco,” Harry repeated for the third time. “Come on, turn on the camera and let’s go. The crew’s already setting up inside.”

   Maybe Draco was getting sick. His forehead was burning hot and his thoughts were blurring even as he sat down in the café.

   They picked the table right in the front to be sure that Brooke knew who they were and Draco ignored whatever flu or bug he’d picked up on their jet-setting travels, blaming his vulnerability to any illness on the stress he was under watching people make terrible romantic decisions. Still, the show must go on, right? “Rolling.” When Draco spoke the back of his mouth tickled.

   Kennedy settled into her Victorian-style chair. If Draco’s wits had been one-hundred percent with him he would have noted the way her braid was done differently. Instead of casually falling down her shoulder, the braid sloped neatly down her back in a fish tail.

   “You look good,” Harry assured Kennedy in Draco’s stead. He’d noticed Draco wasn’t as animated as usual that morning and was planning on keeping a close eye on him until they could talk about getting him some rest alone.

   Kennedy thanked Harry but her eyes darted from camera lens to camera lens, clearly too absorbed in her own thought to pay any attention to the co-hosts.

   Harry, on the other hand, paid attention to the job he had to do. He had to entertain. “Did you talk at all to Brooke last night after we got to the hotel?” Harry asked Kennedy.

   “Mhm.”

   “Did she say anything about the meeting?”

   “Nope.”

   “Then what did you talk about?” he tried again.

   Kennedy’s eyes impatiently fixed on the closed door to the café. “The usual.”

   By the time Harry finished a long hiss of air and reminded himself to be patient with guests on the show like Kingsley had said, someone else had entered the café.

   “Oh my god,” Kennedy breathed.

   Her eyes locked with the other woman’s in complete understanding.

   She was, as Draco had predicted, not a size zero or a blonde. She was a meager brunette, plump around her face and her thighs. She’d dressed nicely in anticipation of her meeting with Kennedy but even her black dress couldn’t hide that she was somewhere around a size fourteen.

   Trying to think on the bright side, Harry was almost about to say ‘well at least she isn’t the Pokémon in her profile picture!’ when ‘Brooke’ spoke first.

   “Hi,” she spoke up. “Hi, Kennedy.”

   Kennedy stood. “Brooke?” she asked, needing to know if it was real.

   “That’s me,” she responded meekly.

   “But you…?”

   “Lied,” Draco finished. He wasn’t happy about being right, but he had to keep his and Harry’s presence strong in front of the cameras. They were the voice of the audience, or at least supposed to be the voice of the audience, and Draco imagined the viewers at home would be thinking the same thing.

   Brooke’s defensive demeanor from when they spoke on the phone had softened. “I… I did.”

   “Why?” replied the victim of the Catfish. Next to her, Harry sat slack-jawed for another mute moment before standing beside Kennedy and putting a protective hand on her shoulder.

   “I don’t know,” Brooke shrugged.

   Draco was the last one of the group to stand, camera in his hand. “Yes, you do. Come on, you know.”

   Kennedy stayed eerily silent when waiting for Brooke’s response. “Um,” Brooke tried. “It wasn’t because I thought Kennedy wouldn’t accept it or get it or whatever. I swear. Kennedy, it wasn’t you that made me lie.”

   “Then what was?” Harry asked gently. “And was that all you lied about?”

   “Yes! Of course! How could I have lied about anything else?” Brooke’s defense flared for a moment before she receded back into herself. “I didn’t lie about anything else.”

   “I swear to god, I swear if you’re lying right now—“ Kennedy started, finger pointed at Brooke accusingly.

   Brooke tried her best not to shrink away from Kennedy’s stare. “I’m not lying. I promise you.” She stood her ground and told the truth that time around. Kennedy deserved that much. “This time I’m really not.”

   A heavy shudder passed through Kennedy, and for a moment Harry felt like he was the only thing holding her upright. “I don’t care what you look like, B. I love you,” Kennedy told her girlfriend weakly. “I just have to know why you lied.”

   “You are so kind, do you know how kind you are?” Brooke responded, her own eyes getting glossy. “I want to be thin, you have no idea how I want to lose this weight and how I hate my stupid hair. I want to be thin for me, and maybe that’s why I lied.”

   “You’re beautiful,” Kennedy reinforced.

   “You don’t have to lie,” Brooke shook her head. “Please don’t lie. I don’t look like all the pretty girls do, and maybe you can somehow accept that but I can’t. I want to lose this weight, but I never have the time or the energy to do it.”

   Kennedy moved away from Draco and Harry’s protection to wrap her arms around the other woman. “If you want to change for you, then I’ll help you.”

   “No, no, you’ve helped me so much already.” Brooke’s voice was muffled since her face rested on Kennedy’s shoulder. Maybe that was an advantage to being shorter than Kennedy, being able to be held. “I can’t keep asking things of you. My conscience won’t let me ask that much of you.”

   “I’ll help you change,” Kennedy repeated anyway. “I’ll help you be whatever you want to be. If you want to lose weight I’ll be your trainer, if you want to stay the way you are then I’ll be just as happy.”

   “Stop being so nice, fuck, I haven’t even come out to my father! You’re too _nice_ ,” Brooke emphasized as if she didn’t deserve the kindness.

   The scene unfolded before Draco and Harry as they watched in awe.

   “You don’t have to come out to your father, you can be in the closet your whole life and I’ll put on a suit and you can pretend you’re with a man—“

   “You are too _nice_! You’re too nice to me and you’re _out of your mind_!”

   “Have you forgotten?” Kennedy asked quietly. “Have you seriously forgotten everything you’ve done for me? You’ve been there, B. You’ve been there when I needed you so I’m just returning the favor. I’m gonna support you. Why do you think I wanted to meet you? So I could reject you? Come here, please don’t cry, come here…”

   Their embrace grew tighter and their words hushed.

   After a couple beats, Draco figured he would be the one to intrude on behalf of the show. “You want some alone time?” he asked with a guarded smile. Kennedy and Brooke’s journey had only just begun, and real-world break-ups and fights happened all the time. He wanted to hope they’d be able to somehow push past their glaring errors—Brooke’s self-confidence, their care of their fathers and the distance—but he didn’t dare show it. “We can interview you later tonight. You can have the afternoon to yourselves.”

   As Harry and Draco walked back to the car with their pack of cameras, one camerawoman got a shot of Kennedy and Brooke’s first kiss.

xxx

   “I’m not sure which one of us won this one,” Harry admitted. “But—“

   “If you say something cheesy like ‘Brooke and Kennedy won’, Harry, I will not hesitate to lock you out of the hotel room for the night,” Draco cut in with a sniffle. His wooziness from back at the café had gotten worse, and he needed to lie down just to keep from getting dizzy.

   Harry cleared his throat. He and Draco really seemed to be getting to know each other well if he could predict what Harry was going to say. “Well.”

   Draco laughed. “Anyway, I think I won. Brooke was lying and Catfishing.”

   “But Kennedy could accept it in the end! You heard them in the interview, they were willing to work through this together. At least Brooke only lied about her appearance. Chris lied about his job, his whereabouts, his true feelings,” Harry listed.

   “Brooke had less lies, I’ll give you that, but that doesn’t make her lying null and void.”

   “It’s easier to get over less lies, though,” Harry went on. “I think they can make it.”

   “You’re nuts.”

   “You’re cynical.”

   “Rightfully so,” Draco nodded. “I’ve had my fair share of shit relationships and I know how they end up after someone breaks the trust. Then it’s just question after question about everything that happens.”

   From Harry’s perch on his hotel bed, felt a tiny jolt of shock that some man in Draco’s past relationships had fucked him over. He knew he shouldn’t be surprised because he’d run into his fair share of bad men in dating, but it just shocked him that it happened to Draco, too.

   Any idiot could see Draco was a catch in terms of looks, and Harry was beginning to see how someone could even grow fond of his personality after some serious time together.

   Harry shrugged, not knowing how to respond. “I hope things are different for Kennedy, then.”

   “So do I,” Draco reinforced. “But I doubt that they will be different.”

   “Time will tell then, I guess.”

   A moment of silence passed between them before Draco’s lungs decided to act up again. He coughed the crook of his arm with a particularly disgusting wet hack. “Unghk.”

   Harry frowned. “Hey, should I be calling a doctor?”

   “No,” Draco sniffled, voice full of self-pity. “I’d rather suffer and wait it out than find some quack doctor in Michigan. My family’s physician is the only one I trust.”

   “Oh my god. Are you seriously telling me the Malfoys have a family doctor like you’re some group of royals?”

   “She knows all of my medical history and knows how to keep things discreet!”

   Harry rolled his eyes. “If you don’t see a doctor here then you’re going to get me sick, and you know we can get back on a plane to New Hope with you like this,” he sighed.

   “Don’t care,” Draco whined. “I won’t see some hack.”

   “You are so pretentious, Draco. You need to at least take some kind of over-the-counter medication to keep you from turning this hotel room into an incubus of disease.”

   “Then why don’t you get it?” he whined again, tipping his head back against his pillows.

   “Because I’m not your servant!”

   “Do you want to get sick?”

   He huffed. “No, Draco.”

   “Then get me something. Aspirin, Mucinex, coughdrops, I don’t care.”

   “No—“

   “Nyquil! That’s what I need,” Draco found the right word. “Something to make me sleep through it. It keeps me to the bed so you won’t have me breathing on your things and I won’t be bored and snot-nosed all day.”

   Harry couldn’t believe Draco was still speaking. “I’m not making a drug-store run for you.”

   “Yes you are.”

   “No, I’m not.”

   “Are so.”

   “Are not.”

   Draco let out a terrible, messy sneeze.

   “Draco! That’s absolutely disgusting!”

   Draco sneezed again, this time scrambling to do it on Harry’s phone.

   “How could someone so snooty be so goddamn gross—“

   Another sneeze tore out of Draco, but this one was less forced and more of his genuine illness.

   Harry threw his hands up in defeat, arriving back at the hotel with a plastic bag full of Aspirin, Mucinex, Nyquil, coughdrops, tissues, and disinfectant spray just twenty minutes later.


	4. Day Off

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As much as I love sharing the stories of others (and as much as Harry and Draco love sharing the stories of others) it’s about time to give these two a little break in filming their series. This is a bit of a filler. I’ve been watching Black Butler lately, and I love Sebastian/Ciel so Draco’s dream is inspired by them.

**Chapter 4: Day Off**

Draco was just where he belonged.

   “Fetch me more fast food and room service,” he demanded of the man at the foot of his throne. Draco’s feet themselves were clad in emerald green slippers of the finest of silk to match the extravagant robes he was wearing.

   The raven-haired servant boy below Draco’s decked-out throne and attire acquiesced without hesitation. “Of course, your highness.”

   Draco smiled smugly. All was as it was meant to be. He had his kingdom far, far below him in a location that seemed to defy Draco’s original idea of where the floor was because of the serving boy.

   Looking back down, Draco noted that his inferior was actually floating. How smart of him, somehow surpassing gravity in order to better serve Draco. If Draco were paying this man he would have certainly given him a raise for that display of loyalty and dedication.

   Even though he hadn’t left his place at the foot of Draco’s golden throne, Draco knew he was somehow getting food also. The logic was blurry, but Draco didn’t question it because at the time it all benefitted Draco.

   “It’s because he knows that if he gets me food and actually goes away, I’ll have nobody for decent conversation,” Draco concluded out loud. The floating servant seemed not to hear him, and upon a squint of Draco’s eyes to get a closer look at him, it was revealed that he was playing with some camera lenses that floated similarly to him, but in front of him.

   A sinking feeling entered Draco’s chest.

   No, no, he could feel his kingdom slip away—he couldn’t think of the show when he was having such a fantastic dream!

   Draco tried his hardest to change the camera lenses to something else in his dream, tried to use his mind to actually work for him and not against him, but it failed. The harder he fought the creeping in of reality, the swifter it came.

   “No,” Harry heard Draco grumble in his sleep. “No, no cameras.”

   Harry snorted, the first noise he’d made in hours. Even though Draco was a heavy sleeper, he’d stayed quiet in his hotel room comings and goings in order to assure Draco was too busy being knocked out to pester him for more blankets or gripe about how he was ‘surely dying’ and then refusing to see a ‘common physician’ when Harry suggested they just give up the farce and get a professional’s help.

   “Bring me back to my castle,” Draco whined, sounding slightly more cognizant than he had a few moments ago.

   Harry didn’t even look up from his laptop. “Only in your dreams, Draco. Literally in your dreams.” Harry had the day off because of Draco’s sickness as well, since the show couldn’t exist with one host according to Kingsley.

   On his day off in the middle of Mason, Michigan (a singularly boring town, as Harry had learned when he snuck out to explore a little) Harry decided it was best to stay in and surf the internet rather than the frigid waves of the local lakes—which were all inexplicably brown.

   He had checked in with Luna, Neville, Dean, and wished Ginny a happy birthday on her Facebook timeline before Hermione finally logged on and he could unload some of his wild tales of Draco Malfoy-isms onto her.

   Hermione mostly pitied Harry for having to be around such an insufferable man—even after Harry explained Draco had matured since high school—but laughed occasionally at the bizarre things that happened while Harry and Draco were filming.

   It would also be a lie to say that Hermione wasn’t smirking to herself about the fact that Draco was at Harry’s mercy from being sick, forced to rely on someone he’d taken so much pleasure in torturing back in school. While Harry was relatively forgiving, Hermione held grudges.

   Hermione suggested replacing Draco’s treasured shampoo and conditioner with much less hygienic substances, and even had a mischievous idea or two about what to do when Draco was asleep that involved a glass of water, a can of whipped cream, three strawberries, and a small dog. Hermione did not easily forget when someone slighted her, even when it was years ago.

   Harry decided in the middle of the chat that he would make Draco apologize to Hermione later for what he’d done to her specifically in school.

   Not only would that ease the tension between Harry’s new coworker and Harry’s best female friend, but it would make Harry feel less guilty when he laughed at one of Draco’s jokes or caught himself quietly admiring Draco’s more physical features.

   Harry would feel a lot better about acknowledging the fact that Draco was and always had been hot when Draco acknowledged what a complete dick he’d been and asked for both Ron and Hermione’s forgiveness.

   Harry wouldn’t make Draco apologize when he was sick, though. If he did then that opened up the door to Draco shrugging off the apology as something said in an ill stupor.

   More than anything, Harry wanted Draco to have his wits about him when he informed Harry’s closest friends that he had amended his ways. Well, sort of amended his ways. Draco was still an asshole, but it was over things like hat choices and honesty rather than over social class and physical features as he had in school.

   “What time is it?” Draco asked, finally having gone through an intense emotional journey to accept the fact that his Perfect Dream wasn’t coming back to him and it was time to wake the hell up.

   “It’s four in the afternoon,” Harry told Draco. “You really needed the sleep and I needed the break from being ordered around.”

   Draco chuckled to himself and anticipated a cough, but one never came. “I have specific needs, Harry. You can’t blame me for going after them.”

   “I can blame you for whatever I want. You made me take three separate trips to the pharmacy! You weren’t satisfied with regular tissues, no, you _had_ to have the ones with the lotion—“

   “They’re different!” Draco defended. “They are a markedly different tissue experience.”

   Harry rolled his eyes while typing a ‘goodbye’ to Hermione. Conversations with Draco needed his full attention. “Only you would use the phrase ‘tissue experience’,” Harry said after he finished typing.

   Draco nodded. “You’re right. I’m much more sophisticated than anyone else on this planet.”

   “Before you passed out you ate about five orders of cheese fries.”

   “Your point…?” Draco asked, either not seeing the odd juxtaposition of behaviors or not caring.

   “You’re disgusting,” Harry decided. “And I pity the staff that has to disinfect this room when we leave.”

   “Hey! At least I didn’t get you sick!”

   “The coughing on me really helped that, I imagine,” Harry laughed. He closed his laptop and put it to the side and hugged his knees to his chest. It was amusing to watch the faces Draco made when he talked; that was honestly half of the spectacle.

   So, Harry kept his eyes on Draco and Draco didn’t disappoint. He twisted his features in thought and scrunched his nose up. “Hm. It really is a wonder I didn’t get you sick.”

   “Don’t jinx it.”

   “I’ll jinx whomever I please whenever I please,” Draco argued petulantly before a cough finally sputtered its way out of his throat.

   Harry laughed. “Don’t exert yourself, it clearly upsets the germs.”

   “I’ll upset whomever’s germs I please whenever I—“ Draco was cut off by his own cough.

   Shaking his head, Harry reached for the night stand in between them to get some more cough drops out of the bag. “Here,” he sighed, plopping two into Draco’s opened hand and making sure their fingers didn’t touch. If Harry got sick just as Draco was getting better, Kingsley would probably have a conniption.

   “Thanks,” Draco mumbled, remembering his courtesies before popping the lozenges into his mouth.

   “You’re welcome.”

   “Want to watch TV?”

   “Sure.”

   The next hour passed easily. The episode of whatever crime drama was on the hotel’s main channel was interesting enough to keep Draco and Harry quiet, but nowhere near entertaining enough to put them on the edge of their seats with each twist and turn in the story.

   The next day, on the other hand, would be their toughest case yet.

   In that day of rest, however, they were allowed a marathon of crime stories in companionable silence. They were able to sit back, relax, and exist together peacefully. If anyone from their home town were able to see them they would have declared it a miracle or at least a divine occurrence.

   Privately, Draco called it ‘sort of wonderful’, because for the first time it seemed as if in spite of their clashing personalities, Harry and he could actually get along.

 


	5. Lorraine and… Well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you about to read this, I salute you. For some context: well. I’m writing this fic for my friends (the gay conglomerate known as The Nick Cages) and we all really, really love making fun of Macklemore. It’s gotten out of control. This is for them and is probably going to be exhibit A in a trial against my own sanity someday. Also, I’ve officially committed to a college and have been very busy (I know, this update took like ten thousand years) but I really am planning on writing more often after this. Thanks for sticking by me, guys!

**Chapter 5: Lorraine and… Well.**

   Draco’s eyes widened. He couldn’t pick a word for what he was feeling because there was no word for it, not a single existing one in the English dictionary.

   It was, after all, an extraordinary circumstance he found himself in with Harry Potter as his companion and fellow witness.

   The out-of-body experience began when they saw the subject header of the email.

   “Click,” Draco ordered. “Click it, click it, click!”                                                                

   Harry didn’t have to ask which email Draco was referring to. The both of them through either their queer connection or their similar senses of humor had spotted the subject line.

   It was a diamond in the rough. Between emails of ‘my lover needs to see me!’ and ‘I don’t think my boyfriend is telling the truth’ was the holy grail of all MTV Catfish emails.

   As Draco continued to search for the word to describe the rising in his chest, his only thoughts were scrambled descriptions of divine intervention causing a spiritual awakening and clips of Grammy footage that would haunt him until the end of his days.

   “No,” Harry whispered as he clicked on the email, repulsed yet drawn to it like a moth to a flame. “No, this can’t be real. This is a joke. This is someone’s idea of a joke.”

   “I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s a joke. This is the funniest fucking thing that has ever happened to me. Look, there’s her Skype information. Call her, Harry. _Fucking call her_.” Draco was so excited that his camera hand was shaking and he’d forgotten the ‘keep the cursing to a minimum’ rule.

   Harry shook his head and didn’t stop shaking his head even as he added the woman who sent the email’s contact information to his friends list on Skype.

   “Holy shit. Holy shit,” Draco repeated over and over again. When the woman accepted the friend request and a green little symbol popped up next to her name to signal that she was online, Draco’s ramblings grew even more obscene and entirely incomprehensible. “Fucking shit fuck holy mother of—“

   “Shut up!” Harry laughed. He wasn’t sure when he’d started laughing but it had definitely grown in intensity over the moments he’d spent typing in her contact information. “I have to call her,” he laughed out. “Fuck, fuck, we have to call her. Shut up, stop laughing, stop—“

   Unable to stop laughing himself, Harry dissolved into a string of curses similar to his partner’s.

   “This is a joke, fuck, it has to be,” he tried. “Fuck, fuck, god damn shit mother _fuck_.”

   The screen showed that this woman was trying to contact them through a webcam call and though neither would admit it later, they both let out a scream of laughter.

   Draco, unable to keep himself composed for much longer, snuck his arm in between Harry’s and stole the computer mouse to answer the call. “Hey!” Harry responded, trying for a moment to wrestle it back.

   “Um, hello?”

   “Oh my god.” Harry’s laughter kept him from noticing the world around him for a moment, and he certainly hadn’t noticed that Lorraine had popped up on their screen.

   “Hello?”

   Harry and Draco, interrupted from their melee, snapped to look at the screen.

   As the designated one with manners for the day, Harry was the first to speak. “Hello.”

   “It said on the screen that you guys are from MTV’s Catfish?” Lorraine questioned carefully.

   Harry blinked. “Yes.”

   “So you got my email…?”

   When faced with the author of the email, Draco and Harry were speechless. Lorraine seemed like a normal human being. She had dyed red hair with curls that were clearly only there from a curling iron indicating she was physically capable of operation one, wore a turquoise frock that indicated she wasn’t locked in an insane asylum, and was looking more like a terrified kid than a prankster.

   Could the email have been serious?

   “Yes,” Draco took over, his smile still wicked even in the face of a seemingly innocent young woman. “We got your email about your online relationship. This is customary—“ total lie. “so could you please describe yourself for the camera? I just—we just—the _network_ just needs to hear your case out loud.”

   Lorraine nodded. “Okay,” she started nervously. “Well, my name is Lorraine Carter, I live in West Virginia, and I’m in an online relationship with the rapper Macklemore.”

   Harry had to make sure this case was worth pursuing not only for his and Draco’s amusement, but the amusement of an audience. There was no way the audience would believe Macklemore was dating a random woman online, so he needed more if Lorraine’s case was going to be aired on MTV. “You have to know how unlikely that is,” Harry tried slowly, elbowing a cackling Draco out of the frame.

   “That’s what I used to think,” Lorraine nodded. “I swear—I hardly ever do stuff like this. But that was before the money.”

   “The money?” Draco collected himself enough to ask, popping back into view of the webcam.

   “Well… Yeah. You see, I told Macklemore that I was having trouble paying my rent,” she explained as if she hadn’t just referred to her online ‘boyfriend’ by his stage name. “And he told me that I would never have to worry about rent when I was with him, that he’s made enough money off of The Heist—my favorite album of all time—to support me forever.”

   Draco and Harry exchanged looks. That was seriously what his album was called? It conjured up the mental image of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis in cat suits robbing a bank.

   “How much money has he given you?” Harry asked for clarification’s sake.

   “Hmmm… Exactly? Well. My rent is two thousand a month, plus the gifts on my birthday…” she looked up at the air above her head like she could see the numbers floating there. “Carry the one… Plus utilities…”

   Harry and Draco waited with baited breath.

   “I’d say Macklemore has given me about thirty thousand.”

   “What?” Harry squeaked. “Thirty thousand _what_?”

   “Dollars.” Lorraine watched Harry and Draco’s astonished expressions unfold on her computer screen. “Yeah,” she shrugged. “I sort of stopped asking questions after the money.”

   Harry’s face was still frozen in that stunned look. Draco promptly blamed it on his having grown up poor and being dazzled by money and took over the conversation. “But you’re asking questions now?” Draco pressed Lorraine. “How come?”

   “I want to see him,” admitted the woman on the screen. “I want to see Macklemore.”

xxx

   If somewhere out there existed a net value of all the things a person had done in their life with positive values representing the good deeds they’d done in their life and negative values representing the deeds they’d done that were detrimental to society, Ben Haggerty (known as his stage name ‘Professor Macklemore’ at the beginning of his career that later devolved into just ‘Macklemore’) would have a positive score.

   Macklemore wasn’t a murderer or a thief, he wasn’t particularly mean, and he didn’t let malice guide his actions. As ridiculous and self-serving as his popular song about marriage equality was, he probably made it thinking he was doing the LGBTQIA+ community a service.

   ‘Same Love’ had probably even changed some minds in the world and created a discussion amongst thick-headed straight people that led to the conclusion of: hey, maybe gay people are people too (a shocking concept to Americans along the Bible Belt).

   In the minds of queers everywhere, though, Ben ‘Macklemore’ Haggerty was a running joke.

   After having made millions of dollars off of ‘Same Love’ and having not donated a cent of it to actual queer causes, the community as a whole realized what a singularly bizarre man Macklemore was.

   Clad in only a fur coat, coonskin hat, and being applauded as ‘the first rapper to ever, ever stand up for ‘the gays’’ (hint: he wasn’t even close to being the first rapper to support marriage equality, as there are actually gay rappers) Macklemore and his white bread face and piercing blue eyes gained the mockery of queer individuals worldwide.

   This wasn’t to say that Macklemore had done anything wrong since there were more errors with the way the media praised him lavishly as the first straight savior of the homosexuals, but he was a joke nonetheless.

   All of that contributed to the red tinge in Draco’s cheeks when he held back laughter through his and Harry’s Skype call with Lorraine and the smile on his face that lasted for much, much longer than that.

   “This woman is off of her rocker,” he laughed, one elbow on Harry’s shoulder as they scrolled through the email again on Harry’s laptop. The airport lounge was actually pretty quiet for once—no screaming kids or loudmouths on phones had arrived at the gate yet. It was quiet businesspeople and college kids returning home as far as the eye could see.

   Harry, hyper-aware of how physically close Draco was to him, laughed a bit more breathily than usual. It wasn’t like Hermione had never hugged him or Ron had never fallen asleep on his shoulder before, but this physical contact was from a newly-approved friend instead of a childhood friend. That was what Harry told himself to explain the difference in sensation, anyway.

    “How completely deranged do you have to be to first-of-all want to date Macklemore, and to second-of-all actually think someone you’ve never seen in your life is Macklemore instead of some Catfish. This is officially the most deluded person we’ve ever met,” Draco blabbed on. If he was bothered by his closeness to Harry he didn’t show it.

   Fucking Draco. He was bothered by the taste of mint and was irate when servicepeople attempted to give him water in a Styrofoam cup, but personal space was a nonissue with him. Harry would never understand that.

   “How wild would it be if it were actually Macklemore?” Harry stoked Draco’s fire. The mere suggestion was laughable, but what would be even more gut-bustingly hilarious was if it truly, truly was the rapper Macklemore carrying out an online relationship with a fan. “It’s not out of the realm of possibility.”

   Draco’s hot breath tickled Harry’s ear when he laughed again. “I think I would _perish_.”

   “I mean, look at the story. She messaged the official Macklemore fanpage not expecting a reply—just to say she liked his music or whatever—“

   “Straight people,” Draco sighed.

   “Yes, yes, I’ll admit Lorraine has terrible taste, but she messaged the _official_ account. That has to mean it’s someone who’s high in the ranks of the… Hierarchy of Macklemore or whatever.” Harry tried to search for words that didn’t sound completely ridiculous, but it was Macklemore they were talking about after all.

   “The _hierarchy_ of Macklemore?”

   “What would you call it?” Harry demanded with a bristle.

   Draco shook his head. “No, I’d call it that,” he admitted. “It sounds insane coming out of your mouth, is all.”

   “Right, of course.” Harry rolled his eyes. “Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that no matter how unlikely and ‘insane’ it all sounds, it could be the truth because of the money.”

   “Thirty thousand is not that much,” Draco shrugged.

   “I really shouldn’t have expected you to say anything different. Your car back in school was at least sixty grand.”

   Draco tilted his head to the side. “I’m not sure how much it was. I just picked out a model and my parents bought it.”

   “My point exactly,” Harry laughed. “You don’t know what it’s like to struggle with rent like Lorraine was struggling, and you don’t know what it’s like to _not_ have a random thirty thousand dollars to give away.”

   “I’m not the only rich guy around, though,” Draco pointed out, not even bothering to address his own financial privileges. “There are plenty of people with my sort of wealth—usually less than what I have, but still.”

   Harry couldn’t have possibly rolled his eyes harder. He had to get it out of his system before getting back to the real point of why Harry brought up the money that was given to Lorraine. “Someone who has money is talking to Lorraine online. Macklemore has money.”

   “Fine, fine. One point in the Mackledaddy’s favor.”

   “Wouldn’t it be crazy if we got even more points that it was Macklemore, though? What if it _really is him_? You know what they say, ‘when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable…’”

   “If we ever go down that road, it’ll be after our research.” Draco paused to shake his head at how keen Harry was on this actually being the mayonnaise pop star.

   On one level, of course, Harry was the one out of the pair who frequently thought about ever-elusive Happy Endings, but on another level this case was completely ludicrous. What kind of happy ending could possibly come from Macklemore?

   Draco looked up at Harry again, eyes significantly wider. “Do you…? Do you actually _want_ to meet Macklemore?”

   “What? No!” Harry responded, highly offended that Draco would ever say such a thing. “He robbed actually great artists at the Grammy’s and keeps making creepy commercials. It’s not even like he’s attractive.”

   “You want to meet Macklemore.”

   “No, I don’t!”

   Draco made a ‘tsk, tsk’ noise. “You’re a disappointment to gays everywhere, Harry Potter.”

   “I _do not_ want to meet Macklemore,” Harry argued. Thankfully they weren’t too close to anyone else while waiting in the terminal; otherwise they would have gotten even more strange looks than they usually did. Something about Draco and Harry being out and about together in public seemed to draw stares.

   “You so do! You want to fuck Macklemore.”

   Harry went into shock for a few seconds before he could properly respond. “Draco, you are absolutely disgusting.”

_“Flight 394 boarding now at Gate C-16.”_

   “The most disgusting human being I’ve ever met,” Harry continued, grabbing the straps of his carry-on bags.

   With a shrug, Draco decided he’d continue the joke for the rest of the flight to keep things interested. “You’re just saying that so you can have some alone time with your new boyfriend Mackleman and his freaky, rectangular head.”

   Harry groaned loudly. This was going to be an even longer filming process than usual.

xxx

   With the camera crew at their backs, Draco and Harry hopped out of the rent-a-car they’d gotten for their escapades in West Virginia.

   Before they could so much as get a clear shot of the apartment building that Lorraine lived in, a sandy-haired man who’d been leaving the building as they arrived walked right up to them and began pestering them with questions.

   They weren’t entirely unused to that. Filming all over America seemed to prove that Americans did have one thing in common—they wanted to be on camera.

   When the saw a professional crew walk down the street focusing on two well-dressed men (Harry was finally looking sharp thanks to Draco) they pounced on them. Draco and Harry hadn’t even taken promotional shots for the show yet and people were treating them like celebrities.

   “Is there someone famous who lives here?” the man asked. “I see the MTV logos.”

   “Congratulations,” Draco awarded him flatly. “You can read.” The man had glasses with rims thicker than the ones Harry wore back in high school so Draco wouldn’t have been surprised if the man could see into outer space with those magnifying glasses on his face.

   “What show on MTV?” the man pressed on like Draco hadn’t just tried to snub him.

   Making his explanation of the show as short as he possibly could, Harry told the man. “And today we’re investigating someone who believes they’re in an online relationship with someone famous.”

   The man’s face went pale and Harry excused it as being starstruck. “Famous…? Who is this person dating?”

   “Macklemore,” Harry sighed defeatedly. Saying the name out loud to a stranger was embarrassing.

   Draco made a huffing noise but didn’t look up from his handheld camera. “She _thinks_ she’s dating Macklemore. We’re going to find out who it actually is.”

   And like that, the sandy-haired man was gone. He nodded feverishly and headed to his car, leaving Draco and Harry at relative peace.

   “Do you think she has Macklemore posters up?” Draco snickered as they walked towards the building.

   Harry tried his best to stifle a laugh. “No making fun of her to her face, Draco,” Harry warned him once they reached Lorraine’s door and knocked.

   Eternally amused that Harry’s morals were more skewed than Draco originally saw in high school, he kept his smile on his face. “I’m serious, though. Imagine if we walked in there and there were wall-to-wall Macklemore posters covered in lipstick stains and other mysterious liquids.”

   Almost immediately after Draco finished his sentence Harry heard footsteps. “Shh!” he hushed Draco, hand reaching out to grab his arm out of instinct in order to get him to hush. His hand landed on Draco’s elbow, a much more intimate gesture than he’d originally planned on.

   Quietly, Harry cursed himself for even trying.

   Lorraine thankfully opened the door to disperse whatever lingering awkwardness there was with the two hosts of the show. “Hello. Oh, I didn’t realize the television crew would be here on the first day,” she laughed nervously, shifting on her feet.

   “Is it a problem?” Harry started to ask, about to tell the camera crew to stop recording for a moment when Draco cut in.

   “It shouldn’t be a problem—“ Draco really couldn’t help himself. “—if you date a celebrity, there are cameras everywhere.”

   Harry smacked Draco’s arm this time. “Ignore him,” he advised Lorraine.

   “I get it a lot,” Lorraine sighed as she tried to get used to the big, black eyes of the cameras on her. “People doubt that I’m really with Macklemore all the time. All of my friends and parents do, anyway. Here, come inside. I’ll show you the page that I contacted him on.”

   When they entered the small apartment, Draco was disappointed to see that there were no Macklemore posters covered in mysterious substances anywhere.

   Harry took the reins on talking this time around. People who were just being introduced to Draco’s sense of humor often perceived it as cruel when in reality it used to be much, much crueler. Harry had an advantage in that department—knowing Draco’s past behavior was even worse made this snarky, sort of bitchy Draco look like an angel.

   Draco also physically sort of looked like an angel when he smiled, too, but that was irrelevant to the Macklemore Mystery that had been put into Draco and Harry’s laps. Harry would think about that later in much, much greater detail.

   At the moment they had a job.

   They watched Lorraine pull up the Macklemore and Ryan Lewis fanpage and her chat history with the ‘Macklemore’ who ran it.

   “How far back do these go?” Harry asked.

   “We’ve been talking for two years now—before he was famous,” Lorraine said that with such pride. “And the romance started almost immediately. He was always really flirtatious.”

   Draco just kind of shook his head sadly. Macklemore. _Flirtatious_.

   “He’s been working hard since day one, though. That’s why we haven’t been able to meet, because he’s almost always in the studio writing lyrics or making music.”

   “What about talking via webcam?” Harry pressed on, trying not to let the way that Lorraine talked about an absurd celebrity like they were in love bother him. ‘Macklemore’ and the thirty thousand dollars he gave Lorraine should have at least had the cash to shell out for a webcam.

   Lorraine shrugged. “He’s never had the time or the computer skills. It’s actually sort of cute how terrible he is with technology. He’s always making autocorrect errors.”

   “You could have always asked him to say you’re name at a show, or on television, or really at any appearance he makes,” Draco suggested. “I meant what I said about the cameras. He’s had every chance to look into one and say he knows you and is dating you.”

   Once again, Lorraine had someone giving her suggestions she’d already talked over with Macklemore—or, whoever was pretending to be him. “He wants to be perceived as a serious artist by the mainstream media,” she explained in exactly the way that Macklemore had told her. “On the phone he always is talking about how people think he’s too silly, so saying my name would only—“

   “You talk on the phone?” Harry cut in. “As in, you’ve heard his voice?”

   “Yeah,” Lorraine nodded. She had actually mentioned that in her email, but Draco and Harry were too busy dicking around with one another to notice.

   “And it’s him?”

   Lorraine scrunched her nose up. “I’ve heard his music enough to know his voice. Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s him. The combination of the things he says about his career, the way he speaks like he does in interviews with the press, his genuine kindness and tolerance, his money, and his voice all make me think it’s him.”

   She scrolled through some more of their chat logs in search of a specific conversation as Harry and Draco watched words like ‘love’, ‘bae’, and ‘studio’ fly by.

   “Here.” Lorraine stopped on a section of replies that looked more like essays they’d sent to one another than actual one-liners in conversation. “We talk all the time about gay rights because he believes all love is equal and so do I.” She said that with a swell of pride in her voice as if she had done a noble and rare thing.

   Draco didn’t know how to tell Lorraine that lots of people actually thought that, not just white rappers who had gay uncles.

   Harry, on the other hand, was rather impressed with the amount of qualifying factors in the messages that Lorraine and ‘Macklemore’ swapped. The man on the other end of the phone calls put some serious effort into this. That, or it was actually Macklemore.

   As if Draco had read Harry’s mind, he shook his head. “You’ve received no confirmation past these messages and the money?” he asked Lorraine. She shook her head. “Can we see some kind of financial transaction receipt? If it happened online you should have received an email or have a transaction statement on your online banking account.”

   Draco knew a thing or two about online banking being the son of an affluent family. They spared no penny on Draco when he grew up but instead Lucius would sit the young Draco on his knee and show him on the computer screen just how rich the Malfoys were.

   For a very, very long time, those high numbers in the bank accounts were what made Draco think he was superior to everyone else in his school, staff and sanitary workers included. He’d been terrible to everyone, really.

   “Oh,” Lorraine uttered as she pulled up some tabs on her browser. “Can you turn the camera away for a second?”

   Draco obliged as she typed in her username and password to some small local branch banking site.

   “Here it is.” She pointed to a deposit log that showed consistent donations from this ‘Ben’, which was Macklemore’s real first name. Harry gave Draco a look and got another smack on the arm in return; Harry didn’t even need to open his mouth for Draco to know what he was going to say.

   Draco also didn’t have to open his mouth for Harry to know what he was going to say. “There are a lot of men in the world named Ben,” Harry prefaced his statement. “But these details help the case that it might actually be him.”

   “Just barely,” Draco huffed. It was insane of Harry to even get the poor girl’s hopes up.

   Draco copied down the account number where the money came from on his phone and resolved that in his and Harry’s research, they’d find that this Ben was a sham—a sham with an eye for detail, yes—but a sham in the end like the rest of the Catfish had been.

xxx

   The phone number’s registration was hidden by the phone company and according to the woman Draco had verbally berated on their customer service line, ‘they couldn’t just go around handing out names to people with MTV shows’.

   The bank account was similarly privatized in the company. It was Harry’s turn to call and check if they could use the show’s big-name network to coerce someone who worked there into letting even a little detail out, but he came back with nothing as well.

   “You know what we have to do now,” Draco said ominously from his place on the edge of the hotel bed.

   “I called the bank,” Harry pointed out, looking at Draco instead of his camera. Harry would have forgotten the camera was there in the first place if it weren’t for the red light it displayed when recording. “It’s your turn to make a call now. You know what _you_ have to do.”

   “No!”

   Harry narrowed his eyes.

   “No way in hell am I making this call.”

   “The network has connections, they’ve had Macklemore host shows and they’ve done interviews with him—“ Harry tried.

   “I am not calling MTV and asking them for their Macklemore connections,” Draco repeated, highly offended that Harry would even consider making him do something so wildly embarrassing.

   Harry crossed his arms. “Don’t be so difficult, Draco. It’s your turn fair and square.” God, Draco could be so fucking annoying.

   After a couple more minutes of persistent bickering, the two of them realized the camera was still on. Harry gave Draco a Look. Draco gave Harry a Look.

   “I’m stubborn,” Harry reminded him. “We could be here for hours and I still wouldn’t call the network.”

   “You’re incorrigible.” Draco let out an annoyed huff, looked away from the camera, and picked up his phone. He grumbled something along the lines of ‘ridiculous’ and ‘unbelievable’ as he dialed the network representative.

   The phone almost rang out before Draco got ahold of someone.

   ‘Speakerphone,’ Harry mouthed.

   Draco rolled his eyes and hit the speaker button so whatever people actually tuned into this show could hear him make a fool of himself.

   “Hello, this is Draco from Catfish,” he sighed into the receiver.

   “Hello, Draco, this is Aubrey. How can I help you guys? Is everything alright?” The voice on the other line was friendly and so blissfully unaware of the case that Draco and Harry were on being their most insane yet.

   Draco glared once more at Harry for good measure. “Everything’s fine, Aubrey. We just, ah, have a question to ask about the case we’re currently on.”

   “A question that the network could answer?” Now the confusion was apparent in her voice.

   “Well.” Draco wasn’t sure how to approach this, as he was with most things, so he just did what he usually did and charged in to make a mess of things. “We need to speak with someone who personally knows Macklemore.”

   Aubrey paused. “Like, the rapper?”

   “That’s a kind word for it,” Draco nodded.

   “Look, I really can’t call in personal favors for you guys right now, you’ve just started filming—“

   Draco corrected her immediately. “This is not a personal favor! Not even a little bit!”

   “Oh, but I thought you were, you know.”

   Ah, of course. The classic ‘you know’ when they meant ‘queer as a three-dollar bill’. Draco would never understand why straight people could dole out anti-gay slurs left and right and then when it came to talking to a person who actually identified as gay they couldn’t even say the word.

   “Because he’s so progressive,” Aubrey tried to explain.

   “I,” Draco clarified sharply. “Do not want to meet Macklemore. The girl in our current case does. She thinks that she’s been talking to him online and via text.”

   Harry snickered and Draco picked up the nearest object—one of their shoes, he wasn’t paying attention to whose it was—and threw it at him. It missed by a longshot.

   “Oh. Well. I could contact Macklemore’s assistant. We usually don’t deal directly with him when scheduling events,” Aubrey offered. “But I really don’t think he’s dating anyone right now. I mean, he’s famous. Why would he date some random girl?”

   “Just contact his assistant and ask,” Draco replied shortly before remembering that his and Harry’s salaries were at MTV’s mercy. He added a reluctant: “Please. Then text me the results of the conversation.”

   Aubrey agreed, Draco hung up and the torture was over. Harry stopped filming and let himself laugh.

   “At least she agreed with me. There’s no way this is actually Macklemore,” Draco jabbed at Harry’s idea that it could ever actually be him. “He’s famous.”

   "I would hate to be famous," Harry laughed, hands outstretched over his head. He said the words with such certainty while reclined on the hotel bed. If there were any universe out there where he was famous, he’d be miserable about it.

   "Right, so that's why you took a job as the host of an MTV show," Draco snorted right back. "Excellent planning."

   Harry didn't seem to mind the prodding. "I liked the job description. I'm having fun, aren't you?"

   "That's not the point."

   "Then you did this for the recognition?" Harry hoped that wasn't true.

   "No," Draco insisted to put a rest to whatever sad resignation was rising in Harry's throat. "Well, partially yes. I would like to be recognized everywhere I go so I don't even have to introduce myself. Plus, men like to sleep with people who're on TV."

   " _You_ have a problem getting men to sleep with you now?" The compliment sailed right over Draco’s thick head.

   " _What_!" Draco had almost forgotten that could be a possible implication of what he had said. "No, no. I have no trouble getting laid, Potter." He whipped out the last name for effect.

   Harry chuckled and flexed his fingers. "That's what I thought. Then why would you need to be famous to do something you can already do well on your own?"

   "It's less chit-chat if they already know my name."

   "Of course," Harry nodded as if that made all the sense in the world. Sometimes he was able to pretend he knew what Draco was getting at. Sometimes.

   "The same would go for you." A perverse curiosity grew in Draco's gut. "When was your last lay?"

   "If it weren't for you I would have screwed that guy in the clothing store–"

   Draco shook his head. "He had gauges, Harry. I had to stop you from being desperate enough to stick your dick in them."

   Harry recoiled. "Oh my _god._ That is so foul!"

   "My point exactly!"

   "I wasn't going to–"

   "Who cares! You were going to fuck the guy with gauges and that's gross and you need to get higher standards," Draco concluded, crossing his arms.

   "You're disgusting for thinking like that. _Fuck_ his _gauges_. Fuck. Where do you come up with shit like that?"

   Draco usually liked to respond to something like that with 'ask your father' but figured that would be highly inappropriate to say to an orphan. He exercised discretion for once. "Active imagination."

   "You're gross."

   "You're gross."

   They sat like that for a while–in quiet disgust with one another but making no move to separate–before getting up to see the reply text from Aubrey.

xxx

   Lorraine was distressed. “I’ve been thinking about the discrepancies in Macklemore’s stories for the past few days, and now… I’m getting a bad feeling about this.”

   Draco had read Aubrey’s text word-for-word to Lorraine at least three times before she got what it said. Aubrey had talked to Macklemore’s assistant and explained the situation to her only to get a reply that Macklemore was not in a relationship with anyone at the time and that Macklemore was a very, very busy man.

   “It isn’t looking like this man is who you think he is,” Harry offered carefully.

   “But why would someone do that?” Lorraine asked, her trusting nature getting the better of her once again. “Why would someone pretend to be someone that they’re not?”

   Draco actually had some insight into that. “From what we’ve seen and the people whose cases we’ve had in the past, people who pretend to be someone else online are usually insecure. They don’t feel comfortable being themselves and have some unresolved issues of their own.”

   “Still,” she muttered. It didn’t satisfy her to think this was just some lonely guy with issues trying to get the best out of some online contact. Lorraine wasn’t sure what would satisfy her, though. “I want to meet him. I want to see him no matter who he is so I can move past this.”

   That was the pattern that this show seemed to be falling into. Harry wished that just once someone was actually who they said they were—not that this case would be the best one to start out a streak of honesty with. Harry was hungry to see some true love, but not so desperate as to see it with Macklemore involved.

   “Then that leaves us one last option,” Draco announced, looking to Harry. “And it’s your turn to make the call.”

   That was what Harry tried to do, anyway.

   They were in the comfort of Lorraine’s apartment but Harry still felt the need to rush. He put in ‘Macklemore’s number twice and it rang out right to voicemail, so he tried texting the number.

   “Alright,” he muttered before narrating what he wrote for the camera’s sake. “’This is a friend of Lorraine’s, I was wondering if we could talk on the phone’.”

   “Let me call,” Draco sighed, reaching for his own phone.

   “Or I could try,” Lorraine offered. “He doesn’t know your numbers so he’s probably not picking up because he thinks you’re telemarketers.”

   Draco hadn’t even heard the word ‘telemarketer’ since 2008. This case was really messing with his perception of pop culture.

   So, with one cameraman filming the three of them on the couch feverishly typing and holding the phone up to their ear, the hope was that ‘Macklemore’ wouldn’t be able to ignore so many calls at once.

   That was when the cameraman heard it. “Do you hear that?” he asked, keeping his lens focused on the couch but trying to look to Draco and Harry for some help.

   “Hear what?” Harry asked. He hadn’t spent enough time with the crew to know all of their names, but this man was named Tim or Tom or something else with a ‘T’.

   “The ringing phone,” he replied.

   All three people on the couch stopped dialing. “ _What_?” Draco stressed, vaguely terrified. That was a line right out of a horror movie and he was not about to be the attractive blonde who died within the first fifteen minutes.

   “It’s gone now,” the cameraman frowned. “Sorry. I don’t think it was anything. It just felt like for a moment it lined up with your calls.”

   Draco and Harry exchanged looks. “Call again,” Draco asked of him.

   Harry typed in the number again, this time lowering the phone from his ear so he wouldn’t have to hear the ringing that actually came from his phone.

   And there it was. Under thin West-Virginian apartment floor the ringing of a phone could be heard below them.

   Draco couldn’t resist. “Macklemore _is in the building_.” He hadn’t known how badly he wanted to say that until he actually said it.

   “That could be any phone,” Lorraine said more to comfort herself than anyone else. “It could be _any_ phone.”

   Harry ended his call and the ringing stopped. “Lorraine,” he said slowly.

   “It could be any phone!”

   “Who lives in the apartment below you?” Harry asked gently.

   Lorraine shook her head. “It couldn’t be him. Mackle—whoever was masquerading as Macklemore—gave me rent money! Randy can’t even pay his own rent.”

   “Randy.” Draco got a name out of all of that denial. “How well do you know Randy?”

   “It couldn’t be him,” Lorraine insisted. “He doesn’t have the money and I haven’t heard the phone ring down there before.”

   “Let’s go downstairs to check what’s going on. After all, you said you wanted the truth.” Harry tried not to scare Lorraine further back into denial as best he could.

   She nodded reluctantly and Draco was sure to get every reaction as close-up as he could with his handheld. He hadn’t seen this coming and Lorraine had a point with her not being able to hear the phone ringing before that day. This could have been a lead or a dead end, and Draco wanted to capture every second of it.

   Harry, Lorraine, and Draco followed by the rest of the crew shuffled down a narrow flight of stairs to the floor below Lorraine’s apartment with only some minor trips. Lorraine, being the only one who was familiar with the footing of the apartment building, reached the bottom of the stairs first but waited for Harry to be the one to knock on the door.

   Harry didn’t hesitate in it, either.

   He knocked on the door for both Lorraine’s truth and an end to whatever kind of white-rapper circus this was turning into.

   The sounds of footfalls and something crashing inside the apartment made it clear that Randy was home. Harry knocked again.

   “One second!” the voice from inside the apartment yelled.

   “That’s not the voice I hear on the phone,” Lorraine insisted.

   When Randy had sufficiently fixed whatever kept falling over inside his apartment, he appeared in the doorway looking as white as a sheet.

   Draco narrowed his eyes. He’d seen this man before; when they first arrived. He’d come up to Draco and Harry and asked why they were filming before running off abruptly. There was now no doubt in Draco’s mind—in spite of the voice and cash discrepancies—that this man was involved in the rouse.

   Randy was still wearing the thick glasses he’d worn when he first met Draco and Harry, too, so even Harry had recognized him.

   “Hello again.” Harry was venturing into uncharted territory. They’d never had a Catfish who lived so close to their victim before. Well, victim was a subjective term since he had after all given her money rather than taken it. “I’m Harry, this is Draco, and I think you know Lorraine already.”

   “Yeah,” the sandy-haired man rasped. “Yeah, I do.”

   “It can’t be you,” Lorraine blurted out.

   If there hadn’t been a group of cameras breathing down his neck then Randy would have tried to lie. He would have gone for the ‘what couldn’t be me?’ response and feigned complete uninvolvement, but he’d always been bad at lying to crowds. “I…”

   That sealed the deal for Harry and Draco at least. “Do you mind if we come in to talk about this?” Harry asked.

   “No,” Randy said quickly. “Here is fine, here is fine.”

   “Then in that case, for Lorraine’s sake, could you clarify why you think we’re here?” Harry asked.

   Randy glanced upwards at the cameras and felt his stomach turn. “Because it’s me,” he mumbled.

   “What’s you?” Draco demanded. He wanted to hear the man say it so there wouldn’t be any room for interpretation.

   “I’m the guy,” Randy sighed. “I’m the one Lorraine has been talking to.”

   Lorraine was taken aback. “ _Talking_ to? Is that what you’re going to call what we’ve been doing? You—you’ve been lying to me! You were pretending to be someone else!”

   “I thought you’d figure it out eventually, that this would fizzle out and end before anything crazy happened, but it didn’t—“

   “It didn’t,” Lorraine interrupted him. Her arms were crossed and her body language becoming more guarded by the minute. “It sure didn’t.”

   “Why did you let it continue?” Draco translated for Lorraine. She was too hurt to be thinking of what she needed to hear.

   Harry felt like shit about the entire situation. Yet another trusting person would learn not to put faith in others because of a sour online romance. He was angry with Randy and everyone like him for taking advantage of the people like Lorraine.

   “I like you,” Randy admitted to Lorraine. “I like you and I heard you liked Macklemore so I sucked up to the admins of his official page until they let me be an admin, too. I was originally going to try and talk to you about Macklemore but when you thought I was him—nobody had ever spoken to me like you spoke to me when you thought I was him.”

   Lorraine was too shocked to reply to that.

   “And what about your voice on the phone?” Harry asked, keeping himself in between Randy and Lorraine protectively.

   “I watched enough videos to know what Macklemore sounds like.”

   “So you watched a bunch of Macklemore videos until you could imitate him to elaborate on your lie?” Draco couldn’t get the mental image of this lemming sitting cross-legged at his laptop repeating Macklemore’s phrases from a YouTube video.

   “Uh,” Randy tried. “Yeah. But that was because she’d be so disappointed if she knew the truth! Like she is now, I guess. I just wanted to prevent this.”

   “And you could have,” Lorraine spoke up once more. “By telling the truth.” Her voice was raw with hurt. As much as Draco and Harry had made light of the man she thought she was dating, she really was invested in this persona as her love interest, her boyfriend, and someone she could rely on. It was a betrayal no matter what Randy pretended to be. “And you were here this whole time. You were one floor away from me and you said nothing.”

   Randy cast his gaze downwards. “I’m sorry, Lorraine. I’m really, really sorry.”

   “What about the money?” Draco asked bluntly. Lorraine may have been shut down by this temporarily but she would want the answer to that later on.

   “I saved up. I skipped out on stuff. I wanted her to stay in her home.” Which was honestly creepy because her home was so close to Randy. “It was no big deal for me. I wanted to do it for her.”

   “Yet you couldn’t tell the _truth_ ,” Lorraine said breathily before a deep breath. “I… I have to go now.”

   “I’m sorry, Lorraine. I’m really sorry.”

xxx

   Draco had set up the camera for their final words on the matter. Finally, on their seventh take, they had gotten a semi-coherent collection of ideas about how the case had gone. The first six takes, however, had been a clusterfuck of Draco trying to make Macklemore puns while Harry tried not to laugh.

   “Okay. Okay, it’s done,” Harry sighed and laughed at once with relief. “It’s done.” He took the camera down from its perch. “You piece of shit. That took so much longer than it needed to. I need to sleep.”

   Draco snickered as he began to remove his clothes for the night. “You just need to learn to accept Mackleman into your heart. Only then can you truly sleep.”

   “Oh my _god_.”

   “There is no rest for the weary hearts of this world until Macklemore blesses them. I’m pretty sure that’s in the Bible.”

   Harry needed to stop laughing. He really, really needed to stop laughing and go to sleep and it was all Draco’s fault for keeping him up and loopy with Macklemore jokes. “You’re horrible,” he managed before flopping onto his hotel bed.

   Draco, now shirtless, crawled across Harry’s bed to the night stand. He dug around in the drawer until he found the book most hotels kept in stock. Flipping open to a random page, Draco decided he would replace any mentions of god in the passage with Macklemore.

   Harry’s reactions made everything so worth it. Draco didn’t even really find what he was doing funny after the first hour of it, but Harry was still cracking up.

   “One thing I ask of the Macklemore,” he began. “This is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of Macklemore all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of Macklemore and to seek him in his temple.”

   Harry screamed into his pillow before reaching up to swat the Bible out of Draco’s hands.

   “Now you’re going to Mackle-hell,” Draco told him seriously. “You’ll be forced to listen to his voice boom above you in a barely-intelligible rap as you mine beats for him for all of eternity.”

   Harry’s laugh bubbled out of him. “You’re insane, Draco. You’re completely insane. Go to bed!”

   “I am in bed.”

   “ _Your_ bed.”

   Draco rolled his eyes fondly. “You should be so lucky to have me in your bed. Macklemorian priests are actually only allowed to be gay. That’s the whole point of ‘Same Love’.”

   _Macklemorian._ Fuck. Harry would be laughing about that one for weeks. “Go to bed!”

   “Fine,” Draco agreed, noting on the hotel clock that they’d stayed up past midnight and would have to pick a case the next day regardless. He hopped out of Harry’s bed and into his own, shedding his pants and turning off the light somewhere along the way. “Sleep tight.”

   Harry grunted in response.

   “And don’t let the Ryan Lewis’s bite.”


	6. Alvaro and Emmett

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s time to turn the pressure up on these two. I’m so bad at updating slowbuild fics—which you all know—but it’s really just so hard to imagine any world where Draco and Harry aren’t already together. Also, this may sound strange, but I have something in the works that I think all of my readers will really enjoy. It’s not fanfic—it’s an RPG centered around Drarry. I’ve started development for it now and I’ll update you with my progress until it’s playable. TW for mentions of Harry’s physically abusive childhood with the Dursleys.

**Chapter 6: Alvaro and Emmett**

   “No,” Draco sighed in reference to the email Harry had read.

   “Agreed. It’s too obvious that it’s a Catfish,” Harry nodded. That may have been the name of the show but it certainly wasn’t what Harry was looking for at the moment. Harry wanted at least one honest person in the world if that wasn’t so much to ask for.

   Draco snorted. “And much too heterosexual. I can’t deal with straight people after what I’ve decided to call ‘Macklegate’.”

   Harry’s hands flew to cover his ears. “No! I can’t deal with _that_! No more Macklemore puns!” he laughed. “I can’t take it anymore!” He had, after all, been kept up almost all of the previous night with them.

   “Can’t take it any Mackle _more_?”

   “I’m going to kill you in your sleep.”

   “My jokes are hilarious,” Draco told him and playfully shoved his shoulder.

   “That’s true, but—“

   “Wait, you think it’s true?”

   Harry was surprised by the interruption. Draco knew he was funny, so what did it matter? “Yeah,” Harry treaded lightly before turning back to the computer screen and scrolling through more emails. “I think you’re funny. You think you’re funny, too.”

   “Of course I think I am. I am.” Draco shook it off. “I just didn’t know your taste had improved.”

   A rush of air escaped Harry’s lips that was supposed to sound annoyed but really just sounded like another laugh. “Sure,” he said purely so he could say something.

   Draco repositioned the camera to get a better shot of the emails in their inbox after the moment passed. He was amazed by how many emails they were still getting every day when the show hadn’t aired a single episode yet. The masses of internet-based lovers seemed like a bottomless pit.

   “Here,” Harry said and clicked on an email titled ‘The Man I Want to Marry’. “You wanted something less heterosexual? Here are two guys.”

   “Perfect,” Draco declared before Harry had even read what their story was.

   “Shut up and listen. ‘Dear MTV, my name is Alvaro Belasco. I live in Provincetown, Massachusetts and love my life here. The gay community here is in control, but I never found the dating scene all that exciting so four years ago I tried online dating and met the most amazing guy. His name is Emmett and he lives on the Jersey Shore.’”

   Pansy Parkinson, Draco’s longtime confidant, had a house on the Jersey Shore. Draco recalled it fondly, as the last time he’d been there it was a blur of booze and men (and some women for Pansy) cycling through the house and spilling out onto the beach.

   It was truly amazing. One could find young, restless queer people in literally every corner of the world ready to party and down to fuck. The LGBTQ+ community was _amazing_.

   “Okay, but the marrying bit?” Draco asked as Harry began reading off information about where Alvaro worked and some other boring things the network would probably include in the episode.

   Harry frowned and scrolled until he found the first mention of it. “Here. ‘Emmett and I have been together for three years and about a year ago he told me that if he ever gets to meet me in person, the first thing he’s doing is proposing to me. I guess that’s kind of like an engagement.’ Wow.”

   Draco shook his head slowly. When his future husband proposed to him, he would smack the poor bastard if he ever gave away when he was going to do it over a Facebook chat.

   “’But he won’t meet me. He’s always busy with work and lives paycheck to paycheck, which means that plane ticket money isn’t in the equation’,” Harry read some more.

   “We’ve heard that before.”

   “He could genuinely not have the money for a ticket, Draco. We’ve been over this, you were raised rich—“

   “It wouldn’t matter,” Draco cut him off firmly. “If I loved someone—if I really, really loved someone and talked about proposing, money wouldn’t be an object. I’d hitchhike there, I’d take a canoe, it doesn’t matter.”

   Harry rolled his eyes. “You? In a canoe? You’d topple the thing over before turning around and heading home with sopping clothes and a headache.”

   With a glare, Draco made his point clearer. “Fine, that was a bad example. What I mean is that I’d find a way to be with the man I loved. I’d find a way and it’s hard for me to believe that all of the people we’ve talked to haven’t found a way on their own.”

   It was fanciful, it held no realistic basis finance-wise, but that little speech of Draco’s was sweet.

   “Why are you looking at me like that?” Draco asked and furrowed his brow.

   “What?”

   “Quit looking at me like a sap. I’m just saying that if I loved someone enough to marry them that a huge part of it would be dedication to, you know, seeing their face. That’s important,” Draco grumbled.

   “I agree,” Harry said honestly. Had he really been staring at Draco strangely?

   “And you can’t fuck unless you see them.”

   And there was the Draco that Harry knew and lov—liked. Tolerated. Found amusing. Yeah, that was it. That was definitely it.

xxx

   Harry knew that Provincetown was a gay metropolis, but he really hadn’t gotten the picture until he and Draco drove away from the airport and towards the town.

   It was an eight minute drive from the local airport to the town and only a fifteen minute drive to the beach. Provincetown was found on a thin peninsula in Massachusetts that connected to a major road.

   One by one the houses in town they passed had more frequently occurring pride flags strewn across their porches while almost every boutique had rainbow stickers and ‘gay business bureau’ stickers on the windows. People’s lawns had political signs for liberal candidates and nautical accents for their proximity to the ocean.

   It was a charming town—the sort Harry would want to live in. It was small enough for there to be a strong sense of community but large enough to not have any neighbors breathing down his neck. The schools were beautiful on the outside from what Harry could see from his seat and most likely run by gay parents.

   The kids raised in Provincetown would be a respectful, happy bunch. Harry wondered how much a house would cost in the area if he ever found someone to settle down with.

   “We’re here,” Draco had to announce to stir his partner from whatever daydream he was immersed in.

   Harry shot up immediately in his seat. “Right, right,” he nodded and clicked the seatbelt off before hopping out of the car and onto a gravel driveway. Compared to some of the small apartments of previous Catfish ‘victims’, this house was beautiful and roomy.

   Harry saw why when he got to the door.

   A woman opened it—her hair was curled and her nails freshly done for the camera—and turned over her shoulder to yell. “Alvaro! The people you emailed are here.” She turned back to Draco and Harry. “Sorry ‘bout that, he’s busy checking himself in the mirror for the thousandth time today. I’m Rosa, his sister. We live here together.”

   Draco and Harry shook her hand before entering the home. It made sense to have a roommate not only for the extra cash but for company. Draco never had a sibling so he imagined what fun it would be to live with someone like Pansy all the time—though there would be ups and downs—and Harry knew what it was like to live with Dudley so he shied from the idea.

   “It is not the thousandth time!” a man’s voice rang from the back of the house before he stepped out and revealed himself. He was smiling as he gave his sister a shove on his way to greet Draco and Harry. “I’m Alvaro, and—wow, you brought the cameras already—and do you want something to eat? Something to drink? The flight here can be murder.”

   Harry politely declined as Draco eagerly accepted.

   “Perfect! I’ll put in some popcorn,” the man grinned and headed off to the kitchen. The camerapeople and Harry both shot Draco a look.

   “I’m starving,” he defended. “Cut out the footage of me eating later if it bothers you so much.”

   “Priss,” Harry accused Draco blamelessly.

   Ever the pinnacle of maturity, Draco stuck out his tongue at him and sat down on Alvaro and Rosa’s couch.

   When Alvaro returned with a bowl of freshly-popped popcorn, though, Harry simply couldn’t resist. He grabbed a handful and avoided eye-contact with the camerapeople, electing instead to talk into Draco’s handheld.

   “So,” Harry began. “Tell us everything.”

   With a wistful sigh, Alvaro did. “Emmett is my heart, he really is. He can act like a big, tough guy but I know what a sweetheart he is. Ha! Don’t put that on TV, he’ll kill me,” he laughed. “But really, I am so happy that he’s the one I talk to and the one I share my day with. He always seems to know just what to say.”

   “You love him,” Harry nodded with a tiny, hopeful smile. This could be the real deal.

   “I do. I am going to say yes when he proposes, after all.”

   Draco needed to be the skeptic at that moment more than ever. Otherwise, Harry and Alvaro would just talk each other up into the clouds for hours. “What contact information do you have for him?”

   “Hm? Well, I have his old dating profile—that now says he’s in a relationship, of course—and his number and a private chat room we use. He’s not into Facebook or Twitter, and that makes things difficult,” Alvaro explained.

   “But you have a picture of him, right?” Draco asked.

   “I saved all the ones he sent over the chat room. Let me just, ah, pick some out to show you,” he said carefully, knowing he’d have to hide the nudes before he let Draco and Harry see anything.

   Harry was blissfully unaware of the implications of Alvaro’s tone. He, just as Draco was always saying, was pretty thick. “Great. Can we see his old profile, too? If you email all of that to us we can start investigating.”

   “And the number,” Draco interjected. “For when we need to call him.”

   “Of course, of course,” Alvaro nodded, a big smile across his face. “I can’t wait to see Emmett. I’ve waited for three years now, and soon I’ll see him.”

   Harry admired the optimism Alvaro had and couldn’t help getting caught up in it himself.

xxx

   “It’s the moment of truth,” Draco said over Harry’s shoulder in an effort to psych him out. “If these pictures match any other profile out there then this isn’t true love and we have another Catfish on our hands.”

   Harry rolled his eyes. Was there anything in the world that Draco wasn’t a complete twat about? They were on the same side and had been for a while during filming but Draco kept up his taunting—though it was admittedly lighter taunting than when they’d been enemies.

   An absurd thought crossed Harry’s mind. Was this how Draco treated his _friends_?

   He tried to think back to high school—something he very, very rarely did—and search for old memories of Draco walking down the hall laughing with Pansy, Crabbe, Goyle, Theo, or Blaise. All he could remember was how expensive their clothing looked, though, and not much of their conversation.

   “Okay, enough suspense,” Draco sighed, bored of toying with Harry. He took the mouse and dragged one of the pictures of Emmett into the Google image search bar.

   The whole thing was actually extremely simple—alarmingly simple—and it was a shock that nobody had Googled how to do something like it before, but it kept Harry and Draco in a job.

   “No matches,” Harry read out loud for the camera and for gloating purposes. “Looks like Emmett isn’t lying.”

   “That was just one picture. We need to search the rest,” Draco huffed. He wouldn’t accept defeat so easily for the sake of the audience watching—but deep down he was pleasantly surprised. Maybe someone was actually who they said they were.

   Harry, never one to back down, put every picture of Emmett through the search engine. One by one the results came back that the photos had no other existing copy on the internet and Harry turned around to give Draco and his handheld camera a victory grin.

   “You’re hideous when you’re smug,” Draco lied. Harry was quite the opposite of hideous. He had one of those smiles that reached his eyes and behind his glasses they looked even bigger and brighter.

   “As opposed to how you’re constantly hideous?”

   “I hate you. You’re lucky just to be in my presence.”

   “So you’re always telling me,” Harry nodded. “And, you know, I was just kidding about—“

   “Obviously, Harry. We’re kidding,” Draco reassured him, amused that Harry actually wanted to point that out. Draco usually just insulted people he was fond of and assumed they would understand that it was in good fun.

   Draco made a face. Had he just admitted to himself in some strange way that he was Harry’s friend? That Harry was his friend? This whole working situation was really fucking with Draco’s perception of friendship in general.

   Luckily for Draco, Harry hadn’t noticed any of his contemplative facial expressions. Harry had entered the number that they were given for Emmett into a public database and gotten nothing. “Damn.”

   “Damn,” Draco echoed in an effort to pretend he had been paying attention. “Now would be the time to call, then.”

   “I’ll do it, but if I hear a phone ringing in the distance I’m quitting,” Harry joked.

   Draco smirked. “I better put my phone away, then, because I’m actually Emmett. I’ve been messing with Alvaro this entire time,” he said with mock-solemnity.

   “That’s horrible of you,” Harry mock-chided. “This show will bring you down on cable television for it.”

   “As it should. Now dial.” Draco sat on the edge of the hotel bed and pointed the camera directly at Harry. With his eye hidden by the lens, Draco was able to step back and take a better look at his cohost. They were situated in a somewhat-decent hotel and hadn’t gotten used to the sleep schedule of travel so Harry wasn’t exactly glowing, but he didn’t look terrible either.

_I need to get out_ , Draco thought to himself _. I’m in P-Town. There’s a thousand available gay men here and the only reason I’m looking at Harry is because I’m stuck with him. He also has a pair of fit legs, that cute, messy hair thing when he wakes up, and steady and strong-looking hands, but that’s all beside the point. Right?_

Harry, with his cellphone on speaker, was already a few rings into the call when Draco stopped thinking about the way Harry’s legs met the curve of his ass.

   There was a click on the other end signaling someone had answered the phone.

   “Hello?” Harry asked expectantly.

   “…Hello?” a man’s voice said from the other end of the line. “Can I help you?”

   “This is Harry, I’m a friend of Alvaro’s,” Harry started out with. He would mention that this would be on TV a bit after the man stopped sounding so suspicious. “Is this Emmett?”

   “Yeah, it is, can I help you?” The voice didn’t sound any less distressed.

   Harry looked at the camera as a way of exchanging a concerned glance with Draco. “Listen, we’re from MTV’s show Catfish. It’s a show about people who’ve met online, and I know for sure that Alvaro doesn’t just want to be with you online. You don’t have to worry about money or hotels or flights, we can take care of that, I just want to know if you’re willing to meet Alvaro in person.”

   There was a tense silence on the other end. Draco waved his hand at Harry to say something, but Harry waited.

   “Wow,” Emmett finally murmured.

   “We’ve talked to Alvaro and he really cares about you. This is an opportunity to meet someone who really does want to be around you,” Harry pressed on.

   “I don’t know if this is the best time.”

   “Emmett,” Harry asserted. “This may be the only time.” That wasn’t entirely true, but it would be the only time that they could meet with MTV’s monetary assistance.

   The other end of the line went quiet. Draco was sure that ‘Emmett’ was going to back out and cut the story short until he spoke up again. “Alright, yeah. Alright. I do… I really do want to see him.”

   As they began working out the details, Draco and Harry both knew that there was still something Emmett was hiding.

xxx

   “’Random’ security checks,” Alvaro laughed and straightened his shirt collar. “Gotta love ‘em.”

   “Are they even allowed to feel you up like that? What do they think you possibly have to hide under your clothes?” Draco asked, appalled that he had to watch this man get patted down by some nitwit in an airport uniform. “Tiny guns?”

   Harry gave Draco a look. “Don’t say ‘guns’ in an airport,” he told him in a hushed tone. “We don’t need anything turning out like the last time you insulted a gate attendant.”

   “He reeked,” Draco reminded Harry. “It was a public health hazard. I was doing all of us a favor by telling him to take a bar of soap to his greasy hide.”

   “He made us empty our carry-ons like three times.”

   Draco shrugged. “By embarrassing him I saved thousands of people from funneling through that airport feeling assaulted by his odor.”

   “Is your goal to make me crazy, Draco?” Shaking his head, Harry rested his eyes for a moment. The travel was rough, but the waiting aspect of it had to be the absolute worst. Harry knew they’d be sitting there for at least an hour _waiting_ for the plane to New Jersey.

   “Yes,” Draco decided before scooting to the edge of his seat and hopping up. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

   Harry, one elbow propped up on the back of the airport bench and one knee curled in to his chest, opened his eyes to be unconsciously the image of an admirer of someone who infuriated him as Draco walked away.

   "So," Alvaro said, putting his own elbow on the bench to get a better look in Harry's eyes for the truth. "How long have you two been dating?"

   The question didn't register with Harry for a moment. "...What?"

   "I said," Alvaro repeated. "How long have you two been dating?"

   "No, no, no no no," Harry assured him, withdrawing into himself and waving his hands frantically in an attempt to get far away from that idea. "We're not dating."

   "What? But you're both gay–"

   "That doesn't mean we're dating!"

   Alvaro shook his head. "I know that. I was going to finish with 'and you clearly want each other'."

   "What?" Harry shook his head quickly and repeated himself. "What!"

   "Don't act so shocked when you were the one making goo-goo eyes at him on the line for tickets. And don't even get me started on the way he goes out of his way to make you laugh."

   "That's impossible. Alvaro, you've only just met us and don't know the full story, so you should trust me on the fact that Draco and I could never work out," Harry scrambled for words. Most of all, he scrambled for reasons why they wouldn't work out when they didn't immediately pop into his head like he thought they would. "He–I–He and I... We have too much history!"

   Alvaro cocked his head to the side. "Did he go out with a friend of yours?"

   "What? No, he hasn't," Harry assured Alvaro quickly. The thought of Draco having been with any of Harry's friends would have made him sick for many completely platonic and pure reasons. Completely.

   "Did he steal from you?"

   "That's even crazier. No, he has not–"

   "Fuck, did he kill your pet dog or burn down your house or something?" Alvaro climbed in intensity. He needed to know what was keeping this couple apart when they were so clearly great for one another.

   "No!" Harry replied loudly. "None of that!"

   "Then what _did_ he do?"

   "He..." Harry realized in comparison to all the things Alvaro had mentioned that this would sound utterly lame. "He was mean to me in high school. And to my friends. He was mean to me and my friends."

   Alvaro slumped back in the airport bench, put his head in his hands, and whispered "Dios mío." before Draco came back from the men's room.

   "Did I miss anything?" the blonde asked them both and resumed his seat–though seemingly closer to Harry this time in Harry's own imagination.

   "No," they replied at once and Harry thanked Alvaro for the solidarity.

   There was no way that Harry was making ‘goo-goo’ eyes earlier. Was there? No, it must have just been in Alvaro’s head. It had to be! The guy was in a relationship with someone he had never met in person, so maybe he was simply bad at picking up romantic social cues in person.

   Harry had to think it was that and ignore the fact that Alvaro lived around more gay couples than Harry could count because if he didn’t—then that meant Alvaro was right. That meant that maybe there was something there between Draco and Harry, some sort of beast of unsaid longings growing between them, and Harry really, really didn’t know how to deal with that.

   He’d obviously dated people before—but none of them were _Draco Malfoy_.

   How was one supposed to ask Draco Malfoy out on a date? Or kiss Draco Malfoy? It was _Draco Malfoy_.

   Harry couldn’t wrap his mind around any of it, so he dug his headphones out of his carry-on with the goal being to listen to music that didn’t make him think of love, or relationships, or Draco.

   When Macklemore’s ‘Same Love’ came on in his ears he almost fell off the bench.

xxx

   The three of them had survived the flight and a night’s stay at a questionable hotel on the Jersey Shore only to find themselves restlessly waiting on the strip of beach that Emmett had told them to meet at.

   Alvaro was tired but didn’t quite show it in the way that Draco and Harry did. The two co-hosts were drowsy enough to sway with the sea wind and let their eyes close under the warm sun.

   “Beach was a bad idea,” Harry murmured so only Draco could hear. There was no need to shake Alvaro’s positive attitude in spite of the news that Emmett had ‘something he needed to tell Alvaro’.

   “You’re not the one who had to put on a gallon’s-worth of sunscreen just to come here, you bronzed bastard,” Draco murmured back, vicious in tongue even when he was sleepy.

   Harry smirked. “That’s what took you so long in the bathroom this morning?”

   “Obviously. What did you think I was doing, jerking off? I’ll have you know that sunscreen actually makes for terrible lube,” he grumbled.

   “It sounds like there’s a story there.”

   “Yes, but not a very good one,” admitted Draco. “Just another drunken shenanigan after a night of drinking with Pansy and these twins—“

   “Oh my _god_. Do not tell me you had a threesome with _twins_. That’s insane even for you!” Harry laughed. Ahead of them on the beach Alvaro turned around for a moment and they remembered that they weren’t alone.

   Draco kept his voice hushed. The crew was trying to get dramatic shots and Draco and Harry didn’t want to distract them. “I didn’t screw both of them—don’t look so scandalized. There was a gay one and a straight one and Pansy had the straight one in her grasp from the moment he looked at her. She’s an evil temptress,” Draco remarked fondly.

   Harry never knew what it was like with Ron or Hermione to be single and out with them on the look for a one-night stand. He never would know, either, because Ron and Hermione’s relationship just kept getting stronger with time. Sometimes he went drinking with Neville, but he could never envision them trying to hook up with some fraternal twins. “Wow.”

   “Shut up,” said Draco. He opened his eyes for a moment to squint them and saw something in the distance. “Shit.” He pressed the ‘record’ button on his camera and motioned to the crew on top of the sand dunes to their left. “I think this is it.”

   Draco and Harry stepped closer to Alvaro in order to flank him with support and so Draco could get a better camera angle.

   The man coming down the beach’s features were becoming more and more clear—and it was more and more clear that Emmett really was who he said he was. The same defined jaw and even the same haircut from the photos were discernible from a distance, and his physique seemed the same as well.

   Alvaro’s smile could not have been bigger.

   He waited for Emmett to walk up to him mostly because he was glued to the spot in shock. When Emmett did finally reach him, Harry opened his mouth to say something for the show’s sake and was cut off by the two men embracing in a tight hug.

   Emmett gripped onto the other man and with a breathy laugh said, “You’re shorter than me.”

   “Shut up,” Alvaro laughed into his shoulder. “The first thing you say to me in person and it’s about my height? You’re such a little bitch. Where’s my ring?” The words were harsh and frank but the tone he said them in was full of joy.

   Harry looked to Draco triumphantly. Finally, they had a genuine couple be the focus of the show if only for an episode after the deceit of previous episodes.

   “Before the ring—” Emmett said, withdrawing from the embrace for a moment. He noticed Draco and Harry standing there once again, having previously forgotten them. “Oh, uh, hello. I’m Emmett.”

   “You are,” Harry nodded, his sappiness at an all-time high in Draco’s opinion. “I’m Harry Potter and this is Draco Malfoy. We’re the ones you spoke to on the phone.”

   Emmett shook hands with the both of them quickly while Alvaro looked to him imploringly. “Well?” he asked Emmett.

   As a nervous tick Emmett put his hand on the back of his neck and rubbed there as he looked down at the beach. “Well.” He took a deep breath. “You know how I didn’t come out to my family until about a year ago?”

   “Yeah,” Alvaro nodded. Draco fixed the camera on the both of them, trying to capture whatever was about to happen.

   “And you helped with that, and I want to thank you. You were, ah… You always were there when I needed you,” Emmett rambled. “But before you I was really, really closeted. I dated women all the time until something happened.”

   Harry felt more invested in the success of this relationship than was his place. He stood tensely next to Alvaro and prayed it was something Alvaro could forgive.

   “I was dating this one woman—my friend Kathy, I talk about her sometimes—and she got pregnant.”

   Draco’s eyebrows could not have been any higher on his head. He knew that there were gay men who had sex with women before they came out, but he hardly ever heard of circumstances like this.

   “And that’s why I work so much, why I have almost no free time. Kathy knows I’m gay and knows what we did was a mistake, but… I could never just leave my kid. I want to support him even though I don’t love his mom,” he told Alvaro. “He’s my kid and I love him. I just… I didn’t want it to ruin things between you and I. I knew that a kid might scare you off.”

   Alvaro had gotten significantly paler in the face, even with his dark skin. “I…”

   “I’m sorry.”

   “I don’t… I don’t really know what to say, Em.” Alvaro took a huge, shaky breath. “You should have told me.”

   “I know.”

   Harry was literally holding his breath.

   “I need time to adjust to this,” said Alvaro as he tried to maintain a clear head. Draco could see him trying to be logical, trying to be rational in the face of something so emotionally tumultuous. “But… It doesn’t change the way I feel for you. I hope you know that.”

   Harry finally remembered to breathe.

   “I love you,” Emmett blurted out. He’d been holding his breath as well.

   “And I love you.” Alvaro stepped forward not for a hug this time but for a kiss. He knew it was naïve now to have wanted to marry someone without meeting them, but he also knew that he cared about this man immensely.

   The kiss was sweet but didn’t last long—it was clear Emmett was uncomfortable in front of the cameras after having revealed something so big.

   “We should go,” Harry said to Draco who was already thinking the same thing.

   They said their goodbyes to the couple knowing that they had more than enough problems to work out on their own.

xxx

   “This is pathetic,” Draco sighed. They had arrived back at the hotel to sleep off the jet-lag and other forms of travel-induced exhaustion that weighed them down. “There are at least ten gay bars within walking distance of this place.”

   “What would be even more pathetic would be falling asleep at the bar.”

   Draco sighed again, dramatic as ever. He was on his bed while Harry occupied the other one. Neither of them were feeling productive enough to take off their day-clothes so they just lay down in rumbled outfits.

   “We should film our reactions,” Harry said with no intention of getting up to do that. “I need to gloat about this guy not being a Catfish.”

   “But he has a _kid_.”

   “Still not a Catfish. His pictures and profile and feelings were all real.”

   Draco turned his head to look at Harry’s body splayed out on the opposite bed. “But he essentially left out enough information to trap Alvaro into step-fatherhood.”

   “I don’t think his intention was to _trap_ Alvaro,” Harry said, turning on his right side to face Draco. “He loves him. He wasn’t honest and that was wrong, but it wasn’t malicious.”

   “Still.”

   Harry didn’t know how to respond to that so he simply didn’t respond at all. Instead, he blurted out a thought that had been stewing in his head since Emmett first revealed his secret. “How could he have been so closeted that he would lead a woman on into sex?”

   “Not everyone is as stupidly brave as you,” Draco shrugged. “Some people really care about the way that others see them—especially close family.” The ‘you had no family to really come out to’ point was stuck somewhere in Draco’s words.

   “But you cared about what your family thought of you and you came out in high school anyway,” Harry protested. He had originally intended to use the fact that Draco wasn’t brave as a counterpoint for the argument that coming out was brave—but now that he had gotten to know Draco better he didn’t truly consider him to be a coward.

   Draco laughed. “My family is… Different. On top of the fact that they knew from the moment I could talk that I was gay, it was never a point of contention. I care about what they think of me _because_ they loved me enough to deal with my sexuality.”

   “Oh.”

   Harry was used to seeing Draco talk on the phone with his parents in small snippets before they took off airports or before they went to bed on days they weren’t emotionally wiped, but he never had much insight on their relationship before.

   It was nice to hear Draco talk about something he loved. Sure, watching Draco complain and bitch and whine was amusing in its own way, but Draco looked so much softer reclined on that hotel bed talking about his family.

   Alvaro’s words rung in Harry’s head—“ _How long have you two been dating?_ ”—and Harry realized he was lusting after Draco when he was talking about his _parents_. The whole thing was sick.

   “How did you come out to your aunt and uncle?” Draco asked. He knew it was a touchy subject, but he also knew that anything to get Harry out of that weird, broody trance he was currently in was worth it.

   He, perversely enough, wanted to hear Harry’s voice again. If Harry could read minds he would know that Draco was similarly panicking over the thought of being attracted to Harry and needed to find a conversational topic that would kill the good mood.

   “It was never really a secret,” Harry admitted. “When I was seven or eight I asked my uncle if two boys could get married because I had my first crush on a boy.”

   “Who was it?” Draco demanded. He knew that Harry and he had both lived in the school district since birth. It had to be someone from their grade.

   Harry let out a huff. He knew that telling Draco would result in some sort of teasing but he also knew that Draco rarely gave up on things without an answer. That’s why they hosted a show about internet mysteries. “It was Dean Thomas.”

   “No way! An _artist_. How Parisian of you,” Draco snorted. “Did he make you a finger painting?”

   “He made me three, actually. I liked the one of the dog best,” recalled Harry. “But when I asked my uncle about marrying a boy he became irate. He said he knew that leaving me in the house to do chores while the rest of the ‘family’ went to church was bound to pervert me, so they tried to take me to church one time after that and I think I wound up biting the priest. They never made me go back again—said I was a ‘devil child’.”

   “You _think_ you bit the priest?” Draco had to be sure of the accuracy.

   “Vernon hit me pretty hard afterwards so it’s kind of splotchy,” Harry admitted without much shame.

   Draco’s eyes were wider than saucers. “He _hit_ you?” That was appalling to Draco. Maybe it was his pampered upbringing or the way his friend Theo’s father used to treat him, but hurting children set his blood on fire. It made him feel dangerously angry and he didn’t even like kids that much.

   Harry watched Draco sit up and realized Draco probably wasn’t even aware he’d moved. Draco looked too furious to notice. “Not often and not too hard. I learned to run really quickly as a kid and he couldn’t keep up so he’d give up if I bolted,” he minimized. “And not past the year where we started having to change in a locker-room in gym. I think he figured at that point people would notice.”

   “He _hit_ you.”

   “Yeah…?” Harry knew it wasn’t normal or loving or at all a healthy behavior and sometimes he got angry about it when he sometimes flinched when people touched him, but it didn’t haunt his nightmares or anything.

   Draco was still upright on his bed, his tense posture having stuck with him all through Harry’s explanation. “That’s so wrong. That’s so wrong, and disgusting, and revolting, and—“

   “Draco, it’s fine,” Harry waived away quickly, feeling his face heat up involuntarily. He hadn’t known that Draco would react so strongly to this. “ _I_ know it’s wrong.”

   “And _they_ probably still don’t. What’s their number? Did they change addresses? We should press charges, sue them for all they—“

   Harry got up off his bed and maneuvered quickly to Draco’s, grabbing Draco’s wrists gently but firmly to stop the frantic hand motions he was making. “Draco—it’s fine. I’m fine. I don’t even think about it anymore.”

   A slow shudder of a sigh left Draco’s body. “You should have never had to think about it at all. It should have never happened,” he murmured, looking down into Harry’s eyes.

   “I know, you’re right,” Harry murmured back. If he wasn’t so busy thinking about how maybe he had blocked out some of the memories, maybe it really was as big a deal as Draco was making it out to be, he would have noticed how close they were.

   Draco had tried to kill the mood and it had worked.

   But still, there was an undeniable growth of something between them. Draco had become fiercely protective over Harry at a moment’s notice.

   The moment passed and Harry let go of Draco’s wrists—his skin was so soft—and they decided they should film their reactions to get it over with. But first, Draco would call and check in on his parents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not crying, you are.


	7. Henry and Nina

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tension.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prepare yourself for one of my favorite tropes of all time. Also, my recent re-watching of The Shining may have influenced this. A lot. Sorry again about the slowness of updates! I just moved into my dorm and I’m getting into the swing of being a college student.

**Chapter 7: Henry and Nina**

   “Hey,” said Harry, his face knit with concern as he clapped his hand on Henry’s back.

   Henry’s gaze had been glazing over every time Harry tried to speak to him on the way over, so he figured being out of the car could give him a physical advantage on saying something that might actually get through to the other man.

   “No matter what happens we’ll find out who Nina is—and the world won’t end. Even if she’s lying, you can learn from this and move on,” Harry tried. “Trust us on that.”

   With the same sad look in his eyes but with a bit more cognizance behind them, Henry nodded.

   Draco blamed Henry’s comatose state not only on the man’s weariness from the flight—California to Delaware was a haul for all of them—but also on his general lack of wit.

   Draco was surer than ever that their current case involved the work of not one but two Catfish(es?), swapping off this man between one another for laughs. The typing styles were different and both typing styles had told Henry different lies about why they couldn’t meet.

   The fact that Henry never did any investigating on his own of this phenomenon had Draco wondering how Henry hadn’t been Catfished before being as vulnerable and gullible as he was.

   “Tomorrow we’ll go to the address she sent us,” Harry spoke calmly and gently to Henry as if there really was just one woman on the other side of the messages that Henry received. “And it’ll all be over with one way or another.”

   “Okay,” Henry finally spoke.

   “Okay!” Draco piped up and clapped his hands together in that way that annoyed Harry so terribly. He always did it when he was planning to leave a situation or trying to cut someone off.

   Even one of the camerapeople snickered at that. Draco’s larger-than-life personality had quirks that were becoming obvious to all his coworkers. “Let’s turn in, guys,” the cameraperson said and ended their recording. “That’s enough travel and hotel footage for now.”

   Once all the cameras were turned off after that, Draco was free to grumble, “And what a hotel it is…”

   Harry snorted, having to agree. The place that Kingsley booked for them was somewhere beyond lackluster and had an eerily rustic decor. Sure, the people pretending to be ‘Nina’ were living out in a pretty remote area along the coast of Delaware, but there had to be better hotels in the area.

   This hotel wasn’t even a chain operation. It wasn’t any form of Hyatt, Hilton, Sheraton, or Marriott or any of their smaller branches, and it didn’t have anywhere near the crowd of one.

   It seemed like that could be a positive—a hotel with not too many guests meant less noise and less bother—but it really just reminded Draco of some horror movie. Less people around to hear him scream.

   The second they walked in, a stuffed owl mounted on the wall was there to greet them with its beak open in a silent screech. There were plenty of animals fallen victim to taxidermy around the lobby, but that owl in particular gave Draco the creeps. He turned away from it with a shudder to see the crew escorting Henry to his hotel room while Harry was grabbing the key for theirs at the front desk.

   That was where Draco found the only creature in the room more disturbing than that owl.

   Behind the oaken desk was a man with a sharp smile that Draco found impossible to trust. His head was bald as a baby’s and combined with his neat hotel uniform, he looked… Not right.

   “Room 394,” the man announced cheerily as he handed Harry the keys—real keys, not like the magnetic cards they were used to. “One queen-sized bed and a charming view of the forest.”

   “Two,” Harry corrected. Kingsley always said there would be two regardless of the hotel.

   The man tilted his head to the side. “I’m afraid that’s incorrect. That room only has one bed.”

   Draco stomped over to the counter. Harry was going to be too nice to this man and he could tell that wasn’t going to work. “We need two,” Draco demanded. “The network paid for two, and if you don’t comply I’ll be having a word with the manager.”

   A little laugh escaped the man. “I am the manager. Mr. Lark of the Delaware Hotel at your service.”

   “You’re not at my service if you don’t listen to me,” Draco retorted. The sun had already set and the plane ride gave him a crick in his neck. “We need a room with two beds.”

   “Well, I’m afraid I can’t simply—“

   “What, open up an empty room? There’s hardly anyone here and I assure you that I can pay for the cost of the room upgrade out-of-pocket,” Draco snapped before mumbling to himself that Shacklebolt would, of course, have to pay him back.

   Mr. Lark shook his head. “There are no available rooms,” he told Draco in a serious tone. “None are ready for guests.”

   “Look, I can just make the beds myself if that’s what you’re worried about,” Harry cut in. He probably wouldn’t even mind sleeping on a bare mattress he was so wiped. “I’m not going to write a bad Yelp review or anything.”

   Draco certainly would be writing one, though.

   “I can’t open any other rooms.” Mr. Lark said every word with great emphasis and purpose.

   “Yes,” Draco hissed back. “You can. There is no law of physics preventing you from reaching behind you with your grubby little fingers, picking any key whatsoever of a room with _two_ beds, and handing that key to us. As far as I’m concerned, it is within your physical power unless you have a mental block on how to do your damn job.”

   The expression on Mr. Lark’s face soured. “I am doing my job. You are the one who ordered the room incorrectly.”

   “I didn’t even order the room! The network did!”

   “Well, well, well,” Mr. Lark dragged on with the same wide eyes as before. He looked as if he’d suddenly figured Draco out or heard some secret about him. “You celebrity types are just going to have to live like us common folk for a day. No special treatment when your fancy talent agents order incorrectly.”

   The strength with which the man spoke about that disturbed Harry. His intuition kicked in past his exhaustion. “The show hasn’t even aired yet,” he told the man quickly. Harry put a firm hand on Draco’s arm. “We should just get going to our room.”

   “ _What_? You cannot seriously be giving in—“

   “Draco.” Harry yanked him away with the grip on his arm so they weren’t facing the man behind the counter. He lowered his voice down to barely a whisper, too. “Do you want to get murdered in your sleep by some pop-culture-hating Delaware hillbilly tonight?”

   Draco turned for a moment to look at Mr. Lark who had thankfully not heard any of Harry’s premonition as he was back to smiling with all of his teeth. He turned back to Harry. “Not particularly. But aren’t you the risk-taker of the two of us?” Why Harry was counseling to back down?

   “You want to know what else I am?” Harry asked rhetorically. Draco almost answered with ‘an idiot’. “I’m the street-smart one of the two of us. Let’s go to the room.” And beyond that, he really was tired. Draco only snored a little bit and stopped if he pushed him on his side, so sleeping next to him was better than not sleeping at all by a long shot.

   Draco looked over his shoulder again and Mr. Lark had not gotten any less creepy. “Fine,” he grumbled to Harry. “But I get the left side.”

   “…Fine?” Harry wrote it off as another quirk of Draco’s he would never understand.

   “Fine,” Draco grumbled again like a spoiled child who hadn’t gotten a toy that day.

   Admittedly a private bed was less of a luxury than a toy, but Draco still reminded Harry of his brat of a cousin sometimes with the way he talked. Not in his actions, though. They were two entirely separate people in that department.

   The halls were lined with vertically-striped wallpaper that peeled at the edges if one looked closely enough, and Draco had an eye for detail. “Disgusting,” he said flatly. He was past arguing with Harry and the bug-eyed hotel clerk and had resigned himself to complaining as he and Harry trudged down the hall.

   Harry certainly couldn’t argue with that.

   They found their room at the end of the hall and to the left and much to Draco’s dismay, the key fit in the lock. If it hadn’t, he could have complained to the manager some more and demanded an upgrade based on that even though there were ‘no other rooms available’.

   Once inside there wasn’t anything obviously wrong with the room. The bed did have fresh linens and the floors weren’t covered in crumbs or anything, but something was _off_ about it all.

   Maybe it was the size of it that freaked Harry out for his hatred of small spaces since the Dursleys shoved him in a cupboard for eleven years. Maybe it was the sad, rustic color scheme that freaked Draco out for his hatred of tacky interior design. But neither of them could put their finger on exactly why the room made the hairs on the back of their neck stand up.

   Harry put down his travel suitcase by the far edge of the room so Draco would have some space to throw his down, too. Harry slept in nightclothes while Draco preferred to strip and pass out on the closest bed-like surface.

   A little chill ran through him at the thought of lying there next to Draco in the dark when all he had on was a pair of tight Calvin Klein briefs. Harry tried his hardest to ignore it.

   They had spent plane rides sleeping next to one another in the seats, Harry tried to reason with himself, but there always was an arm rest (that Draco hogged) between them.

   Draco had put his suitcase down and was undressing as he usually did when the thought crossed his mind that yes, he would be near-naked in a bed next to Harry Potter. He vowed to himself that he wouldn’t do anything desperate that night, but it was a feeble vow.

   The atmosphere of the hotel was strange enough without begrudging sexual tension between Draco and his co-host and he was tired. Harry was tired too, a bit lonely, and altogether very weak when it came to attractive men.

   It was a recipe for disaster.

   The both of them had grown closer over filming, yes, but the both of them also held their doubts.

   Harry put on his thin white tank and cotton pyjama pants and hopped into the bed first to avoid the temptation that would be Draco sitting reclined, looking entirely gorgeous. Harry screwed his eyes tight shut, put his glasses on the bedside table, but even then he saw Draco. Dammit.

   “I should have let the clerk murder us,” he said out loud when it should have been a thought.

   Draco laughed, both shocking and exciting Harry. “But then who would solve the Catfish mysteries of the world?” he said dismissively, knowing Harry was talking about their sleeping situation.

   Draco, per usual, was all talk. His confidence in the evening not dissolving into something they’d both regret was feigned. Pretending that he wasn’t at all short of breath, he reached for light switch and the room went dark.

   After some fumbling, Draco found his side of the bed—the left one, as requested—and quickly drew the comforter over himself.

   With a sigh, Harry yanked some of the comforter back as Draco had taken far, far too much of it.

   “Hey!” Draco pulled the comforter back again and a handful of sheets with it.

   Harry pulled back. “You’re taking too much.”

   “I’m cold,” Draco defended. “And this thing is ratty as it is.” This time when he pulled back Harry’s strong grip had him stuck.

   “Have you ever considered that maybe I’m cold too?” Harry asked sharply. “Just stay on your side with half of the damn comforter like a person with some sort of concept of sharing.”

   “You took way more than your half.”

   “I did not! This perfectly in half!”

   The two both gave a sharp pull at once in their opposite directions. The fabric stretched before springing them towards one another so their backs collided.

   “Ouch,” Draco grumbled, fumbling his hand back to rub where Harry’s shoulder hit him. His knuckles brushed against Harry’s back in the process, giving Harry a rather embarrassing shiver. “Quit being dramatic,” Draco said as if Harry’s shiver was from the cold.

   That made Harry bolt right up in the bed and turn to the lump that was Draco in the darkness. “ _I’m_ being dramatic? You—How can _you_ —! I am not the dramatic one!”

   “Your reaction to that says otherwise.”

   “ _You_ ,” Harry began. Draco, Draco, Draco. “You—you little— _you_! You make me crazy! You make me dramatic!”

   The covers shifted and Harry could see the faint outline of Draco’s hair as he turned to him. “You were crazy to begin with,” he informed him seriously.

   Harry became hyper-aware of his own shaky breathing. “Not like this.” It was Draco wherever he turned and whenever he closed his eyes. All he could see was this snotty, beautiful, wonderful jerk.

   Another thought popped up in Harry’s mind as a clear sign his subconscious was on a mission to sabotage him. He thought of how he missed having a man on top of him, how good it felt to succumb to something physical. He thought of how the weight of a man pressed up against him was never crushing—just a firm pressure keeping him down and grounded.

   He could have slapped himself for being stupid enough to think of it while being in bed with Draco Malfoy, but instead he kept very still.

   He could hear Draco swallow in the dark and wanted to take what he’d said back—let Draco take all the covers he needed and sleep cold and safe in his solitude. Draco had other plans.

   Draco’s hand was on his shoulder in an instant. His long fingers carefully draped themselves on his skin like a test to see if Harry would shake them off. Harry didn’t shake them off.

   The world grew very small and very quiet.

   The only real sound Harry could hear was the soft, wet parting of Draco’s lips as they closed around his.

   Harry let his eyes flutter shut. Draco’s mouth was so warm and his head swam as he leaned into that warmth, letting it send chills down his spine.

   As Draco’s grip on him grew more confident, Harry grabbed blindly in the darkness for the other man. His hand settled on Draco’s bare waist and he let out an embarrassingly content sigh into their kiss over how damn great that felt.

   Draco, damn him, laughed against his lips and moved closer.

   Harry pressed his palm flat against Draco’s smooth skin and decided that if Draco would laugh he would at least have his fill. His hand moved past Draco’s surprisingly tight core and up to his chest.

   The feeling of Draco leaning in to his touches was so much better than it had been in Harry’s imagination. And oh, how he had imagined it.

   As their lips moved together, Draco took it upon himself to get even closer to Harry. He swung a leg over him in the dark, comforter bunching up around them, and settled into Harry’s lap.

   Harry’s brain short-circuited. There was a gorgeous, half-naked man pressing his groin right against Harry’s and it made him feel reckless. All thoughts of resistance were long-dead.

   He let his mouth open, allowing Draco to swirl his tongue past his teeth.

   Almost frantically, Harry moved his tongue to meet Draco’s and wherever they brushed together sparks flew.

   “Off,” Draco managed through their kiss, and Harry’s first and most pathetic thought was _no, please, don’t get off me_. “Your shirt.” _Oh_.

   Harry had to pull back from their kiss to remove the tank, but he hardly felt the absence as Draco’s hands pawed at any and all of the skin Harry revealed. It was dark, and Draco couldn’t see much, but what he was feeling was more than enough.

   Harry was the slightly more muscular of the two, which Draco was pleased to discover upon groping the curve of his pectorals.

   Draco groaned. It didn’t even matter what a terrible idea sex with Harry Potter was, he was absolutely eating it up. Harry was eager beneath him and his breath was sinfully hot as it came out in puffs in Draco’s mouth when they reconnected their frantic kisses.

   And Harry—so adventurous, so brave—rutted his hips up against Draco’s.

   “Fuck,” Draco rasped and pushed back down so he could feel that bolt of pleasure hit his stomach again.

   Arms wrapped tightly around one another, they rocked in the bed as it creaked and groaned beneath them. It wasn’t ideal, but Draco figured they could find a softer bed later. Later? Would there be a later? Draco didn’t want to think like that. He wanted to get off.

   Harry seemed to have the same idea. He’d begun pushing his pyjama pants down, and Draco fumbled in the dark to help them off of his legs.

   Draco rested his forehead against Harry’s as he ghosted his hand up the inside of his leg and to the bulge in his underwear. Draco could feel that Harry was not only hard and ready, but his size was nothing to scoff at.

   “You want this?” Draco asked teasingly because he couldn’t help being a git and because he genuinely needed to know. Things were moving fast enough to create a regrettable evening if Draco didn’t check in.

   Harry put a curve in his back and moved his groin up into Draco’s hand. “Yes, yes, you bastard. You have no idea how long I’ve wanted this.” And how long he’d denied wanting it, too.

   A nervous laugh left Draco’s mouth, betraying his air of confidence. He’d wanted this and had been in denial, too. He’d dreamed of it and felt guilty for it and everything. “Okay. Okay, let me—“ Draco’s hand moved up to the waistband of Harry’s boxers and pulled down.

   Harry’s hands flew to help him, and soon enough Harry could kick his boxers off of his ankles and lay back with his erection no longer constricted by fabric. Draco wished that he had some magical power to turn the lights on or something. He wanted to see Harry all laid out, hot, and bothered. He settled for wrapping his hand around his cock.

   “ _Oh_ ,” Harry let out. His length throbbed at the touch, and his thoughts fell to incoherency immediately.

   Draco smirked, quite pleased with himself. Perversely, he thought of how proud his younger self would be of him, pinning The Great Harry Potter to a bed and making him whine like a girl with a few touches.

   He stroked Harry from base to tip, sure to get every last inch of him in on the friction.

   “Draco,” Harry shuddered, and oh, how wonderful his name sounded on Harry’s lips. “ _Draco_.”

   While Draco continued his languid strokes, Harry’s lack of clear speech hardly affected what his hands would do. He cupped Draco’s erection in his underwear, squeezing tightly enough to make Draco’s breath hitch.

   Harry pushed Draco’s briefs down feverishly, his hands warm and his breathing uneven as he closed his fist around Draco’s length.

   “Yes,” Draco hissed. “Yes, that’s it—“ He was cut off by a moan when Harry circled his thumb around the tip, spreading the precome there and letting it dribble down the sides of Draco’s thick cock.

   Draco’s pace sped up, creating greater and faster strokes around Harry, his whole arm involved in the effort.

   In anticipation of what was to come Harry’s toes curled under. Still, he wanted to last longer than that for Draco’s sake. Harry felt he had to prove his prowess to Draco, who from his stories, had been with quite a few men. “Here,” Harry said between pants. “Give me.”

   He pulled Draco body so close that the only way they could manage it was to press their cheeks together, and pulled Draco’s hand off of his cock. Making sure they missed the friction for only a moment, Harry pressed their sides of their members together and widened his grip to stroke them in tandem.

   Harry never knew a moan like that could come out of Draco Malfoy.

   Draco closed his hand around Harry’s to help him move up and down around the both of them, his hips thrusting into the grip blindly alongside Harry.

   Feeling Draco’s cock and his move together was almost too much for Harry. He only lasted a few more thrusts up before he cried out Draco’s name, his nails digging into Draco’s soft skin.

   It was only when Harry was coming down from his high—and oh, what a high it was. His whole body was warm and charged with electricity that danced from limb to limb—that he realized Draco had come, too—and he’d yelled Harry’s name.

   As completely ridiculous as it was, Harry felt rather proud of himself. He’d brought the gorgeous man on top of him to orgasm.

   And they were a sticky, sweaty mess, their breathing still uneven. Draco kissed Harry’s lips anyway, ignoring how his come had covered his chest.

   If Harry had been able to think beyond _oh my god, oh my god, he’s so good at this, he’s so pretty, his hair is so soft, his lips are like candy,_ then he would have had one burning question.

_What now?_

xxx

   Back in the lobby on the far side of the Delaware Hotel, ‘Mr. Lark’ paid the real receptionist his bribe in cold, hard cash.

   “That’s all five hundred,” he said, his cheery disposition gone. “Now, you know my boss would be very cross if you were to inform the two men here that I was never really their clerk.”

   The real receptionist was a stout man of fifty with dark skin. He could care less about what some MTV crew really wanted when they were paying him so much to ‘step out’ for fifteen minutes while one of their actors talked to the hosts of some show. “My lips are sealed. You have a good night, now.”

   ‘Mr. Lark’ nodded his goodbye, pulling out his cellphone as he exited the building. The place was so damn creepy, but it at least gave him the inspiration for the glass-eyed character he’d played.

   He dialed his boss’ number and only had to wait one ring before he picked up.

   “Did it work?” Kingsley Shacklebolt asked.

   “’Course it worked. They’re in one bed. Is MTV really so desperate on saving on hotel fees?”

   “No,” Kingsley said, stirring his glass of gin back in his penthouse. “But every show needs a little… tension.”


	8. Vera and Wesley

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, everyone! Thank you for the likes, favorites, reviews, and follows. Seriously, you’re all the greatest. I’m at college now and I’m finally happy for the first time in a long time and I wish all that happiness to you guys. Seeing little alerts every day that you all enjoy my story really makes me feel like I’m doing something right. Also, kick my ass if I don’t write any faster on the next chapters—I’m being way too lazy for you lovelies. TW for brief mentions of stalking in a relationship, general unhealthiness (not Drarry, of course).

**Chapter 8: Vera and Wesley**

   Nina wasn’t Nina. It wasn’t at all a terrible surprise to Draco or Harry, but it was to the poor loser who’d fallen for the wiles of two sisters having fun on the other side of a keyboard.

   Henry had held back tears in front of the camera when the sisters quietly admitted it was all a joke, and it was all very repressed and masculine. At least that was what Draco called it as they walked back to the network car after filming was over. Harry had just been holding the camera and letting Draco do the talking.

   Ever since Harry had woken up in a hotel bed next to a naked, sated Draco Malfoy, the online misadventures of the general public paled in comparison. Harry felt guilty for thinking so as he’d taken the job in an effort to make people happy and unite them with their distant loves, but he had hooked up with _Draco Malfoy_.

   The world hadn’t imploded or exploded as Harry thought it would should ever such a thing occur, but it did put him on edge.

   “Shotgun,” Draco called, hopping in the passenger’s seat.

   The blonde was similarly nervous, but distraction was a technique that seemed to fit him well. If he worked hard, if he asked all of the right questions to the Catfish(es), then he could forget about how Harry whimpered out his name in the night.

   Draco, even though trained from birth to steel himself and hide his emotions, was never very good at it. Eventually distractions would run out and he would be stuck in a car ride back to a shared hotel room in complete silence with the man whose hand he’d been thrusting into just a sunrise ago.

   The silence was deafening. The only voice to speak on the way back to the hotel was the GPS, and Draco once again that day forgot he was on television and was supposed to be exchanging witty banter with his cohost to make the show interesting, not because he had a hard-on for him.

   But the cameras created an even greater problem.

   Draco couldn’t exactly discuss his hard-on for Harry James Potter only to have it broadcasted on MTV to millions of teenagers who would doubtlessly slander him on the web for it. Those who didn’t slander him would get far too into it, and fan-art and erotic stories would pop up like weeds between the cracks of the internet.

   Hell, Draco couldn’t discuss his hard-ons or feelings for anyone at any time terribly well at all.

   If the feelings weren’t returned, if it had just been a shitty decision that came from Harry’s loneliness, then Draco would be crushed. Draco wasn’t used to rejection because he was afraid of it, and therefore never left himself open and vulnerable to its sting.

   Draco would maintain a strict distance from a man until that man proved his affections clearly enough for Draco’s taste.

   There would have to be a space with no cameras, like their hotel room at night, to talk themselves into some sort of compromise, for Draco to even attempt such a conversation.

   Night was far away, however, and they had filming to get done.

   First up on their agenda was picking another Catfish case to pursue.

   They arrived back in their creepy hotel room in the same tense silence that followed them throughout the beginning of the day. The equally-creepy clerk wasn’t behind the counter when they arrived, and somehow that made Draco feel a bit better.

   “Um,” Harry made like he was about to start some big, heartfelt speech. “I—“

   “I’m using my laptop this time. Yours is slow as hell,” Draco decided. The door to their room was sealed behind them and while no cameras were currently on, the sooner they shot themselves picking the next Catfish the sooner they could get in a plane and continue to not speak to each other.

   Harry’s heart was beating like a deer running from a hunter. Draco had to speak to him. He had to know what was going on in Draco’s head before the anticipation killed him.

   Harry wasn’t the sort to sleep with people he didn’t see a relationship forming with, and if Draco had just been scratching an itch it would devastate him. Harry was the brave one, though, and he had to face possible devastation in order to gain possible bliss.

   “I wanted to talk to you about—“

   “Rolling,” Draco informed Harry.

   “Uh,” Harry stuttered again. He was doing a lot of that lately.

   “Welcome back,” Draco said into the camera with his perfect, celebrity smile. “I’m Draco, this is my cohost Harry, and we have a wild one for you today. Well, once we pick it.” Draco had planned out each little thing he would say already, feigning surprise or little twists in his voice. It was disturbing how good he was at it. “Well, once Harry picks it.”

   Draco looked at Harry with those big, silver eyes and Harry caved. He would hop on Draco’s train to Denial Central any day when he looked at him like that.

   “Thank you,” Harry replied with a smile and sat down next to Draco on the bed. The bed they’re jerked each other off on. Harry tried not to think about that, and put Draco’s laptop at a comfortable typing distance to check the Catfish emails.

   Draco shrugged. “Ladies first.”

   “You’re insufferable,” Harry said for the millionth time in his life and looked at Draco instead of the camera in his hand. Fucking Draco.

   “I’m chivalrous. I thought you loved chivalry,” Draco teased. Was flirting out of the question when they were both ignoring the fact that they’d had sex? Apparently not.

   Harry was hyperaware of the way his breath felt cold in his throat when Draco said that. “Shut up,” he replied weakly. He had no more ammunition; he was a dead man walking and Draco The Conqueror didn’t seem like the sort to go easy on captured enemy troops.

   Harry had to soldier on for the cameras, though.

   “Here’s an interesting one: ‘Dreams Turned to Nightmares’.” Harry clicked to open the email. “’Dear MTV, my story is not really typical. From what I’ve seen on the forums about this show, almost everyone is in love with the person they met online. I used to be, but not anymore.’”

   “Then why even email us?” Draco scoffed, ready to reach over Harry’s lap and close the tab for him.

   “Listen,” Harry chastised Draco. For someone who liked to pretend he was horribly regal, Draco really was an impatient man. “’I met Vera on a forum about theories on ‘The Shining’. Vera was so much fun to talk to at first. We’d chat for hours about movies and TV shows we both liked. We were boyfriend and girlfriend for a few months, but as time went on Vera got more and more possessive. She got angry whenever I posted pictures of me with friends who are girls.’”

   Out of impatience, Draco had read the rest of the email over Harry’s shoulder as he narrated for the camera. What was at the end of the email made him swallow his words from before. This case really was different from the others.

   “’After weeks of her accusing me of cheating on her when I wasn’t, I got sick of it all and broke up with her. Since my birthday was at the beginning of the relationship, I gave her my address to send a card. And I guess now’s a good time to mention we only live an hour’s drive away. I live in south Arizona and she lives in Kansas. After I ended things with her, weird things started happening around my house.”

   Draco held his breath. Hearing Harry read what was going on aloud made him even tenser about it.

   “’I’ve gotten graffiti marks on my front door,” Harry read on. “’And sometimes I swear someone is watching me. I don’t know if Vera even looks like her profile picture, but whoever has been vandalizing my house hasn’t been caught on camera. It might not be her, but I have a hunch that it is. Please, help me find her so I can talk to her about this and ask her to stop. Thanks, Wesley’.”

   “Shit,” Draco said, releasing his tension in his expletive. They’d have to bleep that out on the show.

   “This is a dark one,” Harry nodded in agreement. “I think we should take it, though.”

   “You’re too brave for your own good. I’ve feared my own safety on one of these cases before, so this would be the first. What if this ‘Vera’ comes after us since we’re helping Wesley?”

   “That’s all the more reason to help him. Wesley could be in danger and maybe Vera needs some kind of professional help that we can secure through the network. Maybe she just needs to talk to someone,” offered Harry.

   “’Talking to someone’ can’t cure crazy,” Draco snorted.

   “But it can help two people work things out in a relationship.”

   “They’re not even in a relationship anymore. Talking can’t help them; they just need to forget and move on.”

   Harry spoke with a force that made it clear that this conversation was not just about Vera and Wesley. “They need to talk. If they don’t talk, the gap of misunderstanding will only grow wider. You can’t forget things like this.”

   “Whatever,” Draco mumbled. He knew where the conversation could go—in front of the cameras, of all places—if he didn’t derail it. “We’ll take the case and get on the next plane to middle-of-nowhere Arizona. I’m going to go take a shower before we Skype this guy.”

   Draco had bolted all the way to the bathroom before Harry could even turn the camera off.

xxx

   “Thank you,” Wesley said again, his face framed by his poor-quality webcam. “She always said she couldn’t chat on camera, but I’ve heard her voice on the phone, ah, I’m rambling. I thought this was a hopeless cause, is all. Just—thank you. I can’t wait until this is all over.”

   “We’re happy to help,” Harry nodded, holding his camera steady on the computer screen while someone from the crew got his and Draco’s reactions. “We’ll find who Vera is and get her to stop.”

   If Draco were feeling more himself he would have chastised Harry for making a promise that he wasn’t sure they could keep. The ‘we’ factor in that sentence made Draco uncomfortably responsible.

   After their typical on-camera goodbyes and off-camera discussions of paperwork Wesley needed to sign, the call with the sad, sunken-eyed graduate student was over.

   “I wonder why he didn’t go to the police,” Draco commented after the call. With all the talk of business it had slipped his mind that he was supposed to be icing Harry out.

   “Not everyone trusts the police—and for good reason. Plus, they probably would have been sexist about the whole thing in thinking that women can’t be predators or making light of the situation.”

   “You sound like Granger,” replied Draco not as an insult but as an observation.

   “She is one of my best friends, yes.” Because of that, Harry was constantly riding the tide of third-wave feminism and kept up to date on all of the human rights crises in the world. “And she’s always right.”

   Draco snorted, but he wasn’t about to disagree. Granger was an astute woman back in school and was probably more intelligent than Draco and Harry combined with whatever degree she got at whatever college, as little as Draco liked to admit that. “Where did Wesley say he lived?”

   “Prescott, Arizona. Listen, Draco—“

   “I’ll call Kingsley and tell him to book the flight.” Not allowing for any protest from his cohost, Draco bounded out of the hotel room.

   As he’d been spending the last couple of months cooped up in hotels, Draco had discovered a few things that most shared. There was almost always a vending machine at the end of each hall, and there was almost always some sort of conference room on the first floor that was empty.

   The first time that Draco had seen Harry as an adult was in one of those rooms. Draco felt tempted to smash his head against a wall for thinking such treacherous thoughts.

   The conference rooms provided a modest amount of privacy, and usually had spinning chairs. Like every other hyperactive white boy, Draco _loved_ spinning chairs. He could fidget with them for hours, and he often did. With his phone in one hand he could spin and spin and spin until the lights in the room blurred. It was how he preferred to talk on the phone, and in school he used to put his laptop on his knees and spin to do homework.

   Draco’s mother, of course, had gotten him a top-of-the-line chair with lumbar support and a massage cover strapped to it, but the two-bit chairs at The Delaware Hotel would have to do.

   He plopped down in one and took a test spin, trying to shake Harry Potter out of his brain before calling Kingsley.

   That concerned look in Harry’s eyes, the big talk he wanted to have, and the way he was trying to squeeze it out all day signaled danger to Draco. Harry was going to tell him it had been a mistake, wasn’t he?

   Draco’s head hurt. He could just see Harry looking down to him and talking with a honey-coated condescension to tell him that it was ‘better if they were just friends’.

   Were they even friends to begin with? What did someone call the person they flirted with, bickered with, wished better for, and had once slept with? Draco avoided the phrase ‘cared about’ because if he cared then he could be hurt.

   Giving the same pain to countless men in his past was one thing, but Draco could really not take what he dished out.

   Draco pushed the corner of the conference room table with his foot to make his chair spin again.

   As the world went fuzzy around the edges, Draco lifted up his phone as a beacon of clarity and went to Kingsley’s contact information. If he got this over with, perhaps he could spin the chair so fast it would take off like a helicopter and he could fly far, far away.

   “Draco,” Kingsley greeted him warmly, having expected a call from him all day.

   “I know we’re a bit behind filming schedule, but—“

   Kingsley hushed him. It made Draco feel like a child. “Don’t you worry about that, Draco. I’m just glad that you’ve called. I know this job doesn’t lend itself to much off-time, so I can imagine how the schedule can be maddening.”

   “Er, sort of?” Draco was caught off-guard. What was wrong with Kingsley? “Are you sick? ‘Cause I could just call an intern to schedule the flight.”

   “No, no, I’m fine,” Kingsley amended quickly. “I just wanted to ask how you are doing. How you and Harry are doing.”

   Draco couldn’t help the bitter laugh that pushed its way out of him. “Great. We’re just great. Are you sure you’re okay?” Where was the brutal honesty? Where was the scathing professionalism? Kingsley was either violently ill or he was up to something.

   Draco cleared his throat and made his suspicion clear in his voice. “What exactly do you want?”

   “An update on how you’re doing. How’s filming? What’s it like meeting these desperate fools? _How’s Harry_?” The emphasis that Kingsley put on the last question made it clear that he only wanted an answer to that one.

   Realization crept up Draco’s neck like a spider. His mouth was dry for a moment. “Kingsley.”

   “Yes, Draco?”

   “There was an error with the hotel room you booked here.”

   From his office on the other side of the country, Kingsley frowned. So much for Draco being the easy one to manipulate with all of his emotional hysterics. Damn. “Really?”

   “You only got one bed for two people,” Draco edged in carefully.

   “Well, I’ll talk with the board of the show about that. That’s certainly not what the network ordered for you.” Kingsley tried one last time. “It won’t happen again, but did you two work it out?”

   Draco narrowed his eyes. “Of course. Harry slept on the floor,” he lied, his tongue feeling sharp in his mouth. “Now for the next case we need a flight to Prescott, Arizona and a hotel. With two beds. Can you, the board, and the network all manage that?”

   “There’s no need to be curt, Draco,” Kingsley couldn’t help but fight back. His voice had returned to its usual gravelly sternness. “Consider it done.”

   “Good.” The call ended with a click from Kingsley’s end.

   The creature of realization that had crawled up Draco’s shoulder had gone feral with rage. _It was Kingsley’s plan the whole time._

   He stopped his spinning chair and forgot the dizziness that came along with that. Draco struggled against his own stumbling as he made his way back to the room in a tornado of anger. He smashed his key card into the hotel door and threw it open.

   “That _rat bastard_!”

   Shocked by the entrance, Harry’s head snapped to attention. He’d been busy fretting on the edge of the bed before Draco burst in, and had been planning to fret and anguish for several more hours before seeing Draco again. “What—?”

   “That,” Draco repeated, feeling like he was going to heave. The door slammed shut behind him. “ _Bastard_. It was his plan. This was all his plan.”

   Harry rushed to Draco’s side at an embarrassingly quick pace. “Who? What’s going on? What happened with Kingsley?”

   With wild eyes, Draco turned to Harry. “Kingsley got one bed on purpose.”

   “What—? Draco, what could he possibly have gained from that?”

   “It’s not about gain! It’s about _television_!” Draco’s voice rose in volume and intensity. “The skeptic and the believer trope. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before! He’s made us Mulder and Scully, chasing down freaks and oddities to the ends of the country!”

   “Draco,” Harry said slowly, trying to be patient with him. “Did Kingsley _say_ he got one bed on purpose?”

   “No, no, of course not. He’d never admit to it—that would spoil his plans. It was in his voice, Harry. His fucking voice showed it all. Trust me. Haven’t I always known when people are bullshitting us?”

   Harry huffed. “Of course I trust you, but you’ve only found bullshit in the past before because you’ve been looking for it! You always expect the worst.”

   “Because the worst is always there! Our producer lured us into fucking!” Draco shouted. Draco only realized what he was saying as it left his lips.

   “So you have no ownership in that, hm?” Harry questioned. His whole frame bristled with anger.

   “No, that’s not what I meant.”

   Harry shook his head and rubbed his temples in frustration. “You make me—“

   “—crazy, I know,” Draco sighed. “I… I’m sorry.”

   “So it was just you being bored? And your boredom was planned by Kingsley?” Harry murmured, wounded. Did even Kingsley know Harry would be putty in Draco’s dexterous hands?

   “No,” Draco replied quickly. “No, no—“

   “Then what the fuck are you doing, Draco?”

   “What the fuck are _you_ doing?” Draco countered, unable to help himself in the heat of their bickering. His need to be right and get the last word was overpowering.

   Draco was a mix of at the very least twelve conflicting desires, and Harry seemed to be composed of the same confusion. “What are we doing?” Harry demanded and quickly followed it up. “Don’t answer that. I can’t stand talking in circles like this. Look—regardless of whatever Kingsley’s done here—do you want to be with me?” He threw all his cards down on the gamble.

   A moment of hesitation from Draco was all it took to cave Harry’s chest in. He let out all of his air and anger, and with that went the color in his face.

   “Yes,” Draco piped up, finally finding his voice.

   All of the life flowed back into Harry with a hint of bitterness that it took so long for Draco to come to his damned senses. “Really?”

   “Yes, really,” Draco grumbled like a child being forced to share his feelings for the first time. “I’ve come to see that you’re not as horrible as I used to think you were.”

   “Gee, you really are a charmer,” Harry replied flatly. Why was he attracted to Draco again?

   Draco sighed and positioned his hands in Harry’s hair in a sort of awkward fashion, not quite used to touching him yet. Once he found a good grip, Draco could rub his thumbs along the shells of Harry’s ears. Harry was reminded why he attracted to Draco when he caught a whiff of the vanilla-clean scent that always seemed to roll off of Draco. “I’m sorry. Again,” he sighed. “But I think it’s understandable that I’m pissed after having been toyed with for the purpose of television.”

   “Well,” Harry replied, putting his hands on Draco’s waist. He felt warm there, and strong. “I seem to recall from high school that you used to be able to concoct quite a revenge scheme when someone wronged you.”

   “Hm.” Draco’s lips spread into a smile. “Yes, yes I could.” He kissed Harry as if to confirm that statement. “So revenge it’ll be.”

   Harry would have pitied the utter hell that was coming Kingsley’s way, but his lips had found Draco’s again. The planning would come later.

xxx

   What would have been a grueling cross-country flight had actually turned out to be Draco and Harry’s best yet. They talked the whole way there, and even though Harry let Draco have the window seat, Draco didn’t turn away from him once.

   Harry taught Draco a palm-reading technique that their high school psychology teacher Dr. Trelawney had shown him after class once. Draco laughed and denounced them both as insane, but kept his hand in Harry’s for the rest of the flight. Apparently, Draco had a long ‘love line’. He made dick jokes for a solid five minutes after that, and Harry couldn’t exactly disagree with how proud Draco was of his endowment.

   The case upon arriving in Arizona, however, was anything but enjoyable.

   The only moments of true clarity amongst the muddled relationship between Wesley and Vera, who later turned out to be a frequent customer of the ice cream stand Wesley worked at, were in the moments Draco and Harry planned while off-camera.

   Their next booked hotel room had two beds, so they used one to lay out charts and schematics.

   Even though through Kingsley’s meddling they’d found each other, their producer wasn’t getting off of the hook so easily.

  


	9. Viewing Party

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> College has been so insane and I haven’t gotten a moment to write. Seriously though, kick my ass for taking this long. Thanks again to all of you lovely, lovely readers who put up with my shit.

**Chapter 9: Viewing Party**

   Harry knocked on Draco’s door with his free hand.

   It was odd to not sleep in the same room as Draco every night once filming ended. Harry had grown so accustomed to Draco’s boisterous personality filling up a room that returning to his apartment seemed wrong. It was quieter than ever.

   There was nobody there to complain to but the walls and ceiling, and when Harry rolled over in his bed there was nobody to reach out and touch.

   Sure, Draco was over Harry’s apartment quite frequently and vice versa, but Harry missed him more and more each time they were apart. Draco called him a sap for it, but smiled like he agreed.

   One of the unforeseen benefits to working in television, other than falling for one’s co-host, was the fact that after filming they had months at a time to relax. The show had been in post-production and edited half to death while they lounged around and spent the first of their many royalty checks.

   But even post-production came to an end. In Harry’s hand was the finished product—season one of MTV’s ‘Catfish’ starring Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter.

   Everyone involved in shooting was given an advanced copy of all the episodes while the public would watch the first episode of the season that evening on television.

   Draco and Harry were wrapped up in getting commercial footage and voice-overs for the past week so that the show would actually garner an audience, and from the online buzz, it seemed that people liked the concept.

   Time would only tell what their ratings and viewership would be, though. Draco and Harry had agreed that they didn’t really care about that, and that the finished product of their weird adventure was reward enough, but both hoped for a renewal of the show without getting their hopes up too high.

   The door to Draco’s apartment opened. His face lit up on seeing Harry, and stepped back to usher him in quickly. “Hey. You have the—?”

   “Yup,” Harry nodded. Draco didn’t even have to finish his sentence for Harry to know what he meant. Their nonverbal communication had improved far beyond what it was during the show, and there were several reasons for that.

   The most important reason was that they had gotten to know each other’s bodies very, very well.

   Draco gave Harry a kiss and closed the door behind him.

   “I’ve got pita chips, wine, that disgusting cheese puff thing _you_ like…” Draco listed, motioning to the display of booze and food on his coffee table.

   “I know you love Cheetos,” Harry insisted. “Don’t lie to me.” He knew Draco’s apartment very well, too, and made himself at home by plopping down on Draco’s couch.

   The apartment was exactly what Harry expected on his first time visiting. Expensive white drapes, smooth leather couches, and tastefully-placed accent pillows.

_“You’re so… Gay,” Harry said, shaking his head when he first saw the layout._

_“Says the man who had my dick inside him last night.”_

   It was comfortable for all of its cold elegance, and Draco’s Egyptian cotton sheets were always warm when Harry slept in them.

   Draco picked up the DVD case and popped it open. It was unmarked, and they were contractually obligated not to show it to anyone who wasn’t involved in production. Draco would probably show it to Pansy and Theo later anyway just as Harry would show it to Ron and Hermione.

   “There’s something I should say before we watch this.” Draco’s voice was deadly serious. “I’ve been Catfishing you the entire time. I’m a sixty year-old man from Michigan who just needed to feel young again.”

   Harry’s laugh in response was full and loud. “Well, then I should tell you that I’m really a _seventy_ year-old man from Alaska who’s been writing to you after each of my murders. That’s the only time I can feel arousal.”

   “Now that’s a lie,” Draco laughed after popping the DVD in his player. His wide-screen TV with game consoles and players and speakers coming out of every orifice was his pride and joy, and Draco sincerely hoped the resolution made him look handsome on television. “Because you’ll get aroused by almost anything.”

   “Is that a complaint I hear?”

   “Hardly. I love that you’re easy,” Draco responded with a wry smile. He walked back towards the couch and fit himself comfortably in Harry’s arms when he reclined.

   Harry adjusted to finally having Draco close to him again, breathing in his scent and wrapping his arms around him. He kissed the back of Draco’s neck and felt the fine hairs there.

   “Are you ready?” Harry questioned.

   “Wait.”

   Draco leaned forward and poured them both glasses of wine—just in case. Editing was a majority of reality television, and they could have had their every move twisted and taken out of context for the sake of drama for all they knew.  If Draco was going to be publically slandered, he at least wanted to be buzzed for it.

   With Kingsley’s plan having succeeded in spite of Draco wanting to give the man what he wanted, there would doubtlessly be some mention of Draco and Harry’s personal life.

   Draco handed a glass back to Harry—a dark glass of Amarone—and downed his own with ease. “Now,” he said, clearing his throat. “I’m ready.” He relaxed back into Harry once again.

   With a chuckle, Harry clicked ‘play’ on Draco’s remote.

   “Oh, god,” Draco groaned in pain before he even saw himself on screen.

   “What?” Harry laughed again. The two of them then appeared on the screen in several shots of them driving and riding in planes. “You look fine.”

   “Just _fine_?”

   “For fuck’s sake, Draco. You look utterly fuckable and altogether lovely. Happy?”

   Draco shrugged. “A little.”

   Some narrator’s voice told of the show’s premise, to ‘get to the truth’ and all of that noble bullshit Draco liked to roll his eyes at. “The truth was always depressing,” he recalled.

_“…And from the truth of others, can Draco and Harry find something more?”_

“What,” Harry said flatly, not even phrasing it as a question.

   _“While others find love or heartbreak…”_ The television lit up with a shot of Harry looking at Draco with dramatic, romantic music framing his gaze. _“…What will happen to our hosts? Meet Draco, a public relations agent with a sassy side.”_

   If Draco was as much of a dragon as his name implied, smoke would have been coming out of his nose. “They are _not_ framing me as some sassy gay best friend. I’ll slit their fucking throats.”

   “That’s not very sassy gay best friend of you,” Harry teased and earned an elbow to the gut for it.

   “ _And Harry, a hopeless romantic post-grad who used to be Draco’s frenemy in high schoo_ l.” They cut to a shot of Harry laughing with Draco and then immediately to one of them glaring at one another from their post-sex awkwardness.

   “What! Those shots were filmed months apart!” Harry said indignantly to the television as if it would respond to him. “And I wasn’t your ‘frenemy’, you were just an asshole to me.”

   “And you were plenty of an ass back!”

   “Shh, they’re getting to actual footage of us talking.”

   Draco’s hands flew to his mouth when the television fed him back a noise that was, apparently, his voice.

_“The same city and they won’t meet? I call Catfish right now,”_ the Draco on the screen said with a scowl.

   “Do I really sound like that?” Draco demanded of Harry, smacking him a few times for effect and in hopes of a quick response.

   “Er,” Harry thought out loud. “Yes? I mean, it’s definitely not a bad-sounding voice. Wait, before you ask for more—it’s a sonorous, beautiful voice full of decidedly masculine tones.”

   Draco grumbled in response.

   The rest of the episode descended on them in a similar fashion.

   Draco would complain about the angle from which he was shot by the crew and Harry would complain about the crew catching every second that he looked at Draco.

   “Maybe,” Draco said. “You were just always looking at me.”

   The episode brought back memories of Ruth and her ‘male model’ disappointment.

   While sometimes the show portrayed Draco and Harry as one-dimensional, at least Ruth’s air-time did her justice. Her kindness showed through, and her story was never framed in a way that would mock her. Harry breathed a sigh of relief for her sake. She was the one who had taken the real risk in revealing her love-life on television.

   The editing crew even blew up some of the screenshots of her and ‘Chris’s conversations for the world to see. The motive behind doing so seemed to be lodged in building bridges between the viewer and Ruth, but still. It was a private matter made public.

   Draco suffered through seeing the tragedy unfold again, taking long drinks from his glass of wine. He suffered through it all for one scene.

_“He looked like the kind of guy who’d jack off to My Little Pony!”_

   A burst of laughter took over Draco’s body. “They kept it in! They kept the brony joke in!” he cackled, leaning back into Harry harder as his core shook with laughter.

   “You’re disgusting,” Harry said fondly. He ran his fingers through Draco’s soft wispy hair.

   Before they knew it, the episode was over.

   “I’m not sure if I can watch another right now,” Harry admitted. While he didn’t have as great of a dramatic flair as Draco did, he too was weirded out by seeing the slightly-younger version of himself talk to the camera.

   “Agreed.”

   Before the next episode could suck them back into obsessively watching how MTV had presented them, Harry hit the power button on the DVD player.

   The room was quiet then, but in a comforting sort of way.

   Draco was tipsy but lucid, and weighed down on Harry carelessly. Harry had wished for a man on top of him back in Delaware, hadn’t he?

   “I think in some sick way, both Kingsley and we got what we wanted,” Harry pondered aloud.

   “Doesn’t mean I’m not going through with the plan at the reunion show,” Draco retorted.

   “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

   Draco put down his wine glass on the coffee table. If he was really going to give in to relaxation, he had to get the expensive crimson wine away from his expensive white couch.

   He sighed contentedly and twisted slightly so he could touch his nose to Harry’s. “My parents are going to murder me when they see the show,” he commented airily.

   “Are you sure they won’t murder _me_?” Harry smirked and nudged their noses together. “Almost half of that episode was me looking at you like you’re my new god or something.”

   “They expect everyone to react that way to me. I’ll have to explicitly inform them of your romantic intentions for them to go into full-on protective stance,” Draco told him. His stomach felt light with Harry so close. Draco tilted his head, brushing his lips lightly over Harry’s left cheek.

   “Hmm?” Harry was loath to get into serious talk when Draco was being so amorous. He wanted nothing more than to disappear into his arms and soak up every last bit of affection he’d never thought he deserved before Draco but thoughts of murderous Lucius Malfoy coming after him made him hesitate. “You’re going to tell your parents?”

   Luckily, the question didn’t make Draco back off. It didn’t scare him away. “Yes,” he answered simply and gave Harry’s cheek a sweet peck. “You’re my boyfriend and I feel that they ought to know that.”

   Harry’s heart threatened to burst. “Oh,” he said, filling that one syllable with what felt like every last molecule of breath in him.

   And then came Draco’s throaty, low laugh. Harry could feel the vibrations even through their clothes.

   Harry let a tide of shivers take him and resolved that no clothes should ever block Draco’s anything from Harry ever again.

  Both hands grabbed different sides of Draco’s sweater and pulled upwards, meeting no resistance from Draco himself. In fact, Draco was the one who tossed the sweater to the floor once it got over his shoulders. The fabric was probably something expensive and made by some designer whose name Harry couldn’t pronounce, so the gesture wasn’t lost on him.

   Draco tasted like wine when their lips finally met, but only faintly. He mostly tasted of Draco, a taste that Harry couldn’t quite wrap his mind around. He knew no words to describe it, but he knew it made his toes curl under.

   Kissing Draco felt like falling onto a soft mattress after a long, hard day of work. Embarrassingly enough, it almost made Harry sleepy. He wasn’t used to feeling so warm and relaxed; almost like his muscles could melt right off of his bones—but in a way that was somehow pleasant rather than terrifyingly gory.

   Relationships were strange like that. Especially with Draco, Harry would find himself doing absolutely ridiculous, slightly scary things and enjoying them.

   Just last week he’d caught himself folding Draco’s laundry. He wasn’t even really sure how it happened—one moment he heard Draco’s dryer timer go off and the next everything was folded and he was thinking about doing a load of his socks. His _socks_.

   That was certainly just as horrifying as gelatinous muscles.

   “Lay down.” Draco’s voice cut through Harry’s jumbled thoughts.

   Harry happily moved onto his back, resting his head against a throw-pillow. Squirming into a comfortable position and tipping his eyes back up to Draco, he cracked a huge smile.

   “See? So easy and eager.” Draco climbed over him so their hips rested together and dipped down to kiss his neck. “I love your smile.”

   A happy noise came out of Harry that he would be dreadfully ashamed to make in front of anyone else in the world. He tilted his chin up so Draco could more easily cover him in kisses.

   Draco gave Harry a collar of love bites that would leave light marks that he could marvel at in the morning. Harry in any sort of collar made Draco short of breath.

   All the while, Draco’s hand stroked Harry’s chest up and down in languid motions. Harry’s body rolled up to meet them, edging his hips up against Draco’s lightly.

   As their hips rocked together, Harry’s jeans and Draco’s dark trousers grew tighter. The knowledge that he could get Draco Malfoy hard made Harry feel infinitely powerful and confident. He bucked his hips up sharply with a needy growl.

   “Draco,” Harry said because fuck, was that ever a beautiful name. He lightly moved his nails down Draco’s back and up to grab his hair. Draco’s hair was always neatly groomed, and Harry took the utmost pleasure in mussing it up.

   “The one and only,” Draco acknowledged with one of his signature smirks before closing his lips around one of Harry’s nipples. Draco knew how that drove him mad and loved to use it to his advantage.

   Harry’s cock twitched in his pants as Draco sucked there until the nipple perked up under his tongue. Then, Draco clamped down lightly and rolled the tip in between his teeth. “Fuck, fuck,” Harry cried out, his hand in Draco’s hair tightening.

   Draco hummed to himself, looking down at his handiwork. He gave Harry’s reddened nipple a sweet kiss before coming back up. “Hey,” he said as if he’d had a grand realization. “You’re fucking a TV star.”

   “So are you,” Harry laughed. Draco could be so ridiculous. “Want my autograph?”

   “I’ll tell you where you can put your autograph,” Draco snickered and began to undo Harry’s belt.

   Harry’s belt buckle hit the floor with a satisfying ‘clack’, and from there Draco was free to unzip his pants and wrestle them off.

   Never one to be selfish, Harry assisted Draco with getting his pants off, too. They laughed breathily as they disrobed each other, dealing with where the clothes bunched and got caught with an unmatched enthusiasm. “You are so, so gorgeous,” Harry reminded Draco.

   “Not too bad yourself,” Draco teased, rubbing the bulge in Harry’s briefs as a reward for being so sweet.

   “Fuck you,” Harry laughed.

   “You can do that after I fuck you.”

   There was certainly no arguing with that.

   Draco took off the last piece of clothing on Harry triumphantly. He didn’t hesitate to take Harry’s erection in his hand and begin stroking him, letting out a low hiss as he saw the way Harry grabbed the side of the couch in response.

   “Draco,” Harry moaned, his eyes screwing shut. Realizing he still had his glasses on, Harry ripped them off and tossed them onto the coffee table. Both men laughed at that little outburst, and it felt like Harry hadn’t stopped laughing since Draco came into his life.

   His head felt light. Harry was dizzyingly happy, and in no mood to find his footing in this strange state of bliss.

   “Draco,” he said again, more pleadingly.

   Draco, one hand wrapped around Harry, used his free hand to grab the bottle of lube he kept under the couch. He and Harry had bought it together when Draco ran out of his usual brand, and that had been one hell of a day.

   They’d probably have to do it again sometime soon; the bottle was half-empty already.

   Draco spread the lubricant on his fingers, licking his lips at the sight of Harry moving his ass up, all-too ready for Draco to open him up.

   Draco easily pushed one finger into Harry, pumping it through the rings of muscles before adding a second. It wasn’t just the lube that made it easy, Harry’s complete trust in Draco and his skill allowed him to relax and fit to whatever Draco wanted to do to him. He always knew it would feel spectacular.

   “Fuck,” Draco murmured and grabbed the base of his prick. Harry spread out, face flushed, and hole taking his fingers was a breathtaking sight. It would be even better if he was taking his cock.

   Draco scissored his fingers open and gave himself a few strokes with his lube-covered hand before nudging the tip into Harry.

   Harry’s hands immediately flew to Draco’s hips, trying desperately to pull him in closer.

   Without even thinking about it, Draco positioned himself so he could kiss Harry. Harry in response wrapped his legs around Draco’s waist, sighing as Draco’s length sank into him.

   “Harry,” Draco tried through his groan. It was his turn to look at Harry like he was some new god, some gift from an unknown force that made his cock leak inside of him.

   Draco thrust forward, pushing deep into Harry with each roll of his hips. The couch beneath them bounced slightly with their movements, and Harry muffled his satisfied moan against Draco’s lips.

   Their tongues swirled together, with Draco’s plunging into Harry’s mouth so he could run his tongue along the back of his teeth.

   The wet noises of their kiss and the slapping of Draco’s skin against Harry’s filled the room. Draco, as always, had found just the right angle to thrust forward at so that he brushed against Harry’s prostate and sent bursts of heat through his body.

   Harry felt himself coming close to the edge even without Draco’s hand on him, content to be fucked into the couch by Draco until he let out a pathetic whine and came, but Draco would never let such a thing happen.

   Draco reached back down and made a tight fist around Harry’s cock, stroking him and pushing down his foreskin with each pump of his hand.

   In an attempt to say Draco’s name, Harry just wound up getting out a couple of mangled vowels before his release came. When it hit him, his whole body tensed for a moment and he could have sworn he saw some kind of white light.

   “Draco,” was all Harry could say as he came down from his high. “Draco, Draco, Draco…”

   Draco came as Harry clenched around him, riding out the orgasm with a few more thrusts into the other man. A shudder shook his body before he filled Harry with his come.

   The pair clung to each other as they caught their breaths, their chests rising and falling in sync.

   Harry rubbed the marks he’d left on Draco’s back earlier and kissed the crook of his neck. “You’re really very good at that.”

   “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

   “Don’t ruin the moment, you dick,” Harry said before pinching Draco’s side.

   Ever the wimp, Draco yelped and immediately went into a pout. “Hey.”

   Harry laughed and leaned up to kiss his nose, lingering there for a moment. “Let me take you to bed,” he said quietly. “I do believe you said something about me fucking you.”

   “That I did,” Draco nodded. “And this time we don’t have to worry about the crew walking in.”

   “ _Don’t_ remind me of that.”

   “Hey, you weren’t the one with your legs open. Now carry me to bed,” Draco ordered imperiously, climbing off of Harry so that the brunette could do as he was told.

   Harry rolled his eyes. Draco was a romantic in the strangest of ways, and they often came out as commands more than requests. Still, he ignored the slight burn in his backside and stood, opening his arms to Draco and looking to make an amazing night even better.


	10. Season Finale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, uh, three years later? I promise I actually had this planned but then lapsed into suddenly hating the story and Fearing writing for it. Paranoia aside I’m glad to bring you the final chapter. Every time I watch Catfish I think of this stupid fic, and everyone whose read it has been really indulgent of me in doing so. Like, objectively, ‘Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter host MTV Catfish’ is the least structurally sound idea I’ve ever had and so many of you still read it. Thanks, everyone. Don’t know where I’d be without you.

**Chapter 10: Season Finale**

   The techies decorating the bare stage looked like worker bees, always moving but never colliding.

   Harry adjusted his collar. It would be burning up there for sure under those lights, and the people who would be watching him in the studio audience and at home on their televisions would also doubtlessly make Harry sweat.

   This was in front of a live audience, not just the friendly camera crew.

   He knew people with far worse stage fright than him and tried to be brave in comparison, but his own seemed to grow by the second. There were so many ways this could go wrong.

   “Potter!” Kingsley boomed from the back. “Backstage! We’re bringing the audience in!”

   “Already?” Harry asked, hesitating before stepping onto the stage.

   “We have a comedian on-site to warm them up and throw t-shirts at them. That makes the audience more likely to like you. Trust me,” Kingsley advised him. Kingsley’s suit was sharp and his head freshly-shaved even though he wouldn’t be appearing on screen to his knowledge.

   Harry snorted. “Right. Trust you.”

   Kingsley either didn’t hear Harry or pretended not to hear him. It didn’t really matter. “And get to hair and makeup.”

   “Isn’t Draco still in there?”

   “Is he? Goddammit,” Kingsley grumbled. He broke into swift strides off of the stage.

   Harry was quite pleased at how that little lie went over. Draco’s fussiness was legendary, and Harry was glad to see it work out in their favor for once.

   Draco was indeed stalling hair and makeup—but not because they couldn’t get his coloring right. Okay, that was part of it—those incompetent hacks!—but that wasn’t the whole reason. Draco was buying Harry time.

   The last thing Harry wanted to do was waste it. Moving offstage like he had been instructed, Harry ducked into the tech booth.

   “Can I help you?” a woman wearing a headset asked, clearly upset that her sanctum had been disturbed.

   “Yes, actually. You can. I’m really sorry to barge in like this, and I know you’re probably working with cues and a hundred other things,” Harry prefaced his request with in order to look like he wasn’t doing something entirely nefarious. “But Kingsley asked me to add this as a last surprise before the credits roll.”

   Harry produced a flash drive from his back pocket and held it out to the woman.

   Harry’s earlier apologies didn’t do much to alleviate her scowl. “Right before the credits? God, Kingsley can be so demanding.” She took the flash drive anyway. “Tell him I’ll handle it.”

   “Thank you so much,” Harry gushed. “I know how hard he is to work with, trust me.”

   The woman’s gaze went to the door, so Harry took that as a sign to step out of her territory. He closed the booth door behind him and moved seamlessly back into the frenzy of people rushing around.

   He headed for hair and makeup, guided mostly by Draco’s voice.

   “You don’t _understand_ , I know my hair best!” Draco declared dramatically. “I already know gel doesn’t work—I don’t care how fancy your products are!”

   “Malfoy,” Kingsley grumbled. He stood behind him in the mirror. “Just let them do their jobs.”

   “No hair gel. No cheap foundation. You’re going to have to redo it all—“ Draco cut himself off when Harry entered his line of sight. Harry gave him the signal. “Actually, I think I’ll just redo it myself. I’ll be fine.” Draco hopped out of the chair and sped off.

   Everyone in the room seemed to have whiplash from his sudden departure. Draco really didn’t know what the meaning of ‘a subtle exit’ was. With a fond roll of his eyes, Harry sat in the chair to have his hair and face harassed with a never-ending stream of products.

   “What is his problem?” Kingsley asked.

   “Oh, you know us gays. We’re able to be easily paired with one another because all gay people are attracted to each other, and we’re born with intimate knowledge of beauty products,” Harry replied with a shit-eating grin.

   Kingsley wasn’t amused. Still, he took the scathing sarcasm and shoved it into the back of his mind to deal with later. He had a show to run.

   Harry smiled to himself as the larger man went to go yell at someone else. If Kingsley thought he could play Draco and Harry because of their sexuality, they could play him right back with it.

   On the main stage the comedian wrapped up his act with some jokes about hotel rooms, which seemed terribly appropriate to Harry’s life.

   “…Anyway, I wouldn’t want to be the hotel staff that had to clean up that mess when it was done. Lord knows what a blacklight would reveal!” The audience laughed, but that was mostly because whoever laughed the loudest got a free shirt.

   Harry’s smile grew. He knew what a blacklight would reveal in plenty of the hotels Draco and he shared. That was objectively disgusting but felt like a victory. Harry Potter took his wins where he could get them.

   “Alright, thank you!” The comedian took a bow.

   “That means you’re on in five,” a person dressed in head-to-toe black told Harry. He had no idea who these people were backstage, but they were the sort of mix of stern and focused that he did not want to mess with. The head manager was named Minny something—that was all he knew—and there they were working together on live television where everything could go wrong.

   Well, working together on live television while unaware that Harry and Draco had meticulously planned for something to go wrong. Harry bit his lip and hoped none of the backstage crew would get the blame.

   He felt a hand on his shoulder and didn’t need to turn around to know who it was.

   “Scared, Potter?”

   “You wish.”

   “No more re-takes when you laugh so hard you start coughing,” Draco reminded him. “Live TV.”

   “Quit being an ass,” Harry laughed back. If there was one thing he got out of the entire taping experience it was a bolstered immunity to most of Draco’s prodding. “You’re the one who’s going to have to avoid being obscene out there.”

   “When,” Draco started, his arms snaking around Harry’s waist so his chest was fully pressed to his back. “Have I ever been obscene?”

   “Would you like specific examples?”

   “Yes, several. And use your phone sex voice to describe them.” Draco narrowly dodged the elbow in the gut that Harry threw at him, cackling all the while.

   “There’s one specific example,” Harry offered before allowing Draco to put his arms back around him. What were a couple shoves between co-hosts?

   “Positions!” a voice called out from behind them.

   When Harry lifted his gaze to the stage again he was shocked. The sparse setup that the comedian had was replaced with massive logos, signs for what hashtags to tweet, pictures, monitors, screens—how had the crew gotten all of that into position in such a short amount of time?

   There was, perhaps, a certain magic to a stage crew.

   Draco and Harry broke their embrace in favor of something even hotter—the stage lights.

   They’d rehearsed for cues and marks the day before, so that wasn’t a problem. What was a problem was the crowd of faces staring up at them. They burst into applause immediately when Harry and Draco stepped into view.

   Harry should have expected a warm welcome, but it still felt strange. What had he _really_ done to deserve any of this? He looked to the other wing of the stage.

   Ah, right. There they were. The hopeless romantics, the not-so-web-savvy, the entirely naïve and the utterly resilient Catfish story stars. They were lined up behind the curtain and would go out in the order their episode aired for interviews.

   They were more nervous than Harry and Draco combined. After all, it was their lives that were really on display.

   Harry gave Kennedy a little wave from the stage while some more stagehands adjusted his microphone. She was so busy focusing on her breathing that she hardly noticed it. Poor thing.

   It was strange to have so many people from so many states in one place who would have otherwise never known each other. Those who had found love and those who truly had been Catfished stood side-by-side and exchanged nervous but excited glances.

   And so the parade began. That was the easy part.

   After introductions and another explanation of the concept of the show by Draco and Harry, the reunion show was officially on.

   Draco knew that on the other side of the camera they spoke into that Pansy and Theo were sharing mimosas and truffles in her living room with hearts full of envy and pride. Harry knew that on the other side of the camera Ron and Hermione were eating pretzels and sipping butterbeer, too.

   They didn’t know who else was beyond that blinking red light and tried their hardest not to think about it too hard. Draco was sure his parents were watching while Harry a sinking feeling that the Dursleys would be keeping their eyes peeled for a misstep.

   He hated that feeling. He swallowed it deeper as they welcomed Ruth to the stage.

   She’d really stepped up her make-up for the cameras. Draco wondered if that fedora-toting nerd was out there watching and weeping with regret. He certainly hoped he was weeping.

   ‘Chris’ had declined the invitation to come explain himself once again at the reunion show, which Draco surmised to be the smartest thing he’d done in a long while.

   Ruth entered stage-left and the audience burst into cheers. Some even called her name.

   “So good to see you again,” Harry said after his hug with the victim of their first Catfish case. “Tell us how you’re doing since filming.”

   “Great, actually,” she began and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Ruth was far more comfortable in front of the cameras surrounding her at that moment than she had been when Draco and Harry held the devices.

   Draco was a little offended, but when wasn’t he?

   “Work’s going well and I’m saving up for a bigger place,” Ruth told them just as she had rehearsed it in the mirror fifteen times that morning.

   “Fantastic,” Draco said and was shocked by how genuine that actually was. “So, your story was our first and one of our strangest. Have you had any contact with ‘Chris’ after he revealed himself to be Brian?”

   She shook her head. “No. I made the decision to let all of that go and to delete all my online dating profiles.”

   The audience ‘ooh’-ed and ‘ah’-ed.

   “Maybe it’s for the best,” Harry laughed. The way the people in the audience leaned forward to hear every word—had they actually made good television? Were these people really invested?

   “But what about other men? Real, in-person men,” Draco implored.

   “Oh, none really. As of now I’m still single,” she admitted.

   The crowd went nuts for that one. Hoots and hollers echoed through the studio and made Draco and Harry’s Southern Belle blush.

   One of the cameramen gave Harry the signal to move into the Q&A portion of the interview. Each Catfish hopeful got some time to chat with Harry and Draco before turning them to the real challenge—the audience.

   “Now, Ruth—“ Harry quickly looked to the teleprompter for the name. “’Toby’ here in the audience has a question for you.”

   A boy in the third row stood while a stagehand forked over a mic.

   “Hey,” Toby tested his volume and found himself far too loud. He adjusted his voice lower. “Hey, Ruth. Uhm, something really similar to your situation actually happened to me about a year back. Watching your episode made me feel really connected to you.”

   Someone a couple rows back in the audience let out a loud “aw!”.

   “So, yeah. My question is: how are you getting over it? I mean what’s helped you move past it?” the blushing man finished.

    “Friends,” Ruth said resolutely before adding on. “Family. A lot of ice cream.” The crowd loved that one. “Just looking for the real support around me that I had been ignoring by talking to someone who wasn’t worth my time.”

   “Yeah,” Toby continued as the extent of his follow-up. “Wow, yeah.”

   “Yeah,” Ruth echoed. Things were going well.

   Things continued to go well, and Harry felt his jaw unclench from its usual locked position whenever he was nervous. The stage seemed smaller than it once had, and the room of strangers just a bit more intimate.

   Harry smiled whenever he caught Draco’s eyes because how could he not? Whatever Draco was looking at seemed ten times more interesting than anything else in the room, whatever he pointed to Harry immediately followed the line of his hand to, magnetized.

   He couldn’t truly be cross with Kingsley. But then again, he wasn’t as forgiving as some would like him to be. Once the interviews were over and the audience had exhausted their time for questions it was time to roll credits. There was no telling if they’d do this again, if the show would get renewed or ridiculed, and Harry might actually even miss Kingsley if it ended here. Not before his revenge, though.

   “One last thing,” Harry cut in and nodded to the woman in the booth. “There’s someone who has been so invaluable to this show.”

   “And he asked us for the opportunity to appear onstage today,” Draco continued for Harry. “So he could ask someone in the audience something very, very…” Draco continued with his ‘very’s until he spotted Kingsley in the wings and zeroed in on him, waving him on. “Special. Right Kingsley?”

   Roughly a thousand words were communicated with the following facial expressions Kingsley made, from ‘how dare you’ to ‘oh god, why me?’. Nevertheless he stepped forward. Nothing was worse than dead air time, especially dead air time with Draco looking expectantly offstage.

   Kingsley steeled his expression into one of geniality and walked onstage. “What is it, Draco?”

   “That question you wanted to ask,” Draco said as if he were reminding him. “To Martha.” Draco gestured to a woman sitting in the audience smiling ear-to-ear.

   “Babe…? But she—“

   “She’s here!” Draco said with the most pep he could muster after having baked under the stage lights just a little too long.

   Above them on the screen where clips had aired was a wreath of purple and gold flowers, texting sliding down from the top of the screen to rest in the middle.

   MARTHA, WILL YOU MARRY ME?

   The crowd went wild. Martha went something beyond wild. “Yes!” she called out immediately. “Yes, I’ll marry you, baby!”

   Before Kingsley could sort what happened his girlfriend of five years hurdled over three rows of chairs to fall into his arms. “I,” he stammered.

   “Finally!” Harry said and clapped Kingsley on the back. “You straights do love marriage, huh?”

   Harry half-expected steam to come out of Kingsley’s nostrils. He looked furious, his fiancée’s face buried in his jacket. Behind them, credits rolled.

   “You’re dead men,” Kingsley mouthed to his stars. “Dead men.”

   Draco put his arm around Harry’s shoulder. Behind them the Catfishers and Catfishees filed out, whooping and cheering for the newly-engaged couple. Draco turned Harry by the waist and kissed him front-on in the chaos.

   “Draco,” Harry laughed.

   “Want to go home and watch The X-Files?”

   “I thought you’d never ask.”


End file.
